Publications by authors named "Cova F"

Past research on people's moral judgments about moral dilemmas has revealed a connection between utilitarian judgment and reflective cognitive style. This has traditionally been interpreted as reflection is conducive to utilitarianism. However, recent research shows that the connection between reflective cognitive style and utilitarian judgments holds only when participants are asked whether the utilitarian option is permissible, and disappears when they are asked whether it is recommended.

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Article Synopsis
  • Adding silicon to graphite anodes significantly increases lithium-ion battery energy density but also causes mechanical instability due to volume changes during charging and discharging.
  • Research reveals that in silicon-rich graphite anodes, lithiation dynamics differ based on silicon content, with distinct behaviors observed in charge/discharge processes compared to graphite-only electrodes.
  • Key observations include the preferential lithiation of amorphous silicon and challenges in lithium diffusion, which are essential insights for improving the stability and performance of high-energy-density silicon-graphite anodes.
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A commercial TiO sample, used as received or hydrothermally treated to increase surface hydroxylation, has been functionalized by surface modification with hexadecyltrimethoxysilane. The anchoring of the silane has been characterized by means of FTIR and solid-state NMR spectroscopies, and the grafting density was determined by thermogravimetric and N physisorption analyses. The silane moieties induce a partial decrease of the shielding of the valence electrons of the Ti ions at the surface, and a local modification of their crystal field, as demonstrated by XPS and UV/Vis spectroscopy, respectively.

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The layered material α-RuCl is a promising candidate to realize the Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) state. However, at ambient pressure, deviations from the perfect Kitaev geometry prevent the existence of the QSL state at low temperatures. Here we present the discovery of a pressure-induced high-symmetry phase in α-RuCl, which creates close to ideal conditions for the emergence of a QSL.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers observed a phase transition from triclinic to monoclinic in a photoluminescent organo-gold(I) compound under high pressure using synchrotron diffraction techniques.
  • The transition begins at around 0.6 GPa, and a detailed structure of the new monoclinic phase was determined with advanced refinement methods.
  • The study highlights that rapid diffraction experiments can mistakenly indicate higher pressure levels for phase transitions due to the slow kinetics of the transformation process.
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Objective: This research aimed to determine the stigma toward people with mental illness among mental health personnel and identify individual, professional, and contextual predictors.

Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, and correlational design was used. The sample consisted of 218 mental health personnel working in Outpatient Psychiatric Units belonging to hospitals and Community Mental Health Centers in Chile.

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Background: Mental disorders in university students are a growing attention problem in the international community due to their high prevalence and serious consequences. One possible reason is university students' difficulties in coping with stress. Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a transdiagnostic process that, when combined with stress, can lead to the development of various disorders.

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New technologies regularly bring about profound changes in our daily lives. Romantic relationships are no exception to these transformations. Some philosophers expect the emergence in the near future of love drugs: a theoretically achievable biotechnological intervention that could be designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships.

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Lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (LHP-NCs) embedded in polymeric hosts are gaining attention as scalable and low-cost scintillation detectors for technologically relevant applications. Despite rapid progress, little is currently known about the scintillation properties and stability of LHP-NCs prepared by the ligand assisted reprecipitation (LARP) method, which allows mass scalability at room temperature unmatched by any other type of nanostructure, and the implications of incorporating LHP-NCs into polyacrylate hosts are still largely debated. Here, we show that LARP-synthesized CsPbBr NCs are comparable to particles from hot-injection routes and unravel the dual effect of polyacrylate incorporation, where the partial degradation of LHP-NCs luminescence is counterbalanced by the passivation of electron-poor defects by the host acrylic groups.

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Unlabelled: In the past decade, there has been a growing amount of research on so-called self-transcendent emotions, mainly in the domain of positive emotions. However, most candidate self-transcendent emotions (e.g.

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[Formula: see text] is a promising material for developing high-capacity anodes for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, microstructural changes of [Formula: see text] anodes at the particle and electrode level upon prolonged cycling remains unclear. In this work, the causes leading to capacity fade on [Formula: see text] anodes were investigated and simple strategies to attenuate anode degradation were explored.

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Effective and accessible treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are urgently needed. Soluble Aβ oligomers are identified as neurotoxic species in AD and targeted in antibody-based drug development to mitigate cognitive decline. However, controversy exists concerning their efficacy and safety.

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Information on patterns of prescription of long-acting injection (LAI) antipsychotics among people who are incarcerated is lacking. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate prescribing rates for first-generation antipsychotic (FGA)-LAI versus second-generation antipsychotic (SGA)-LAI and to identify the factors associated with the prescription of one of the two classes of LAI. A cross-sectional study was conducted among incarcerated adult males hosted in Monza detention center between January 2013 and April 2023.

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The use of scintillators for the detection of ionizing radiation is a critical aspect in many fields, including medicine, nuclear monitoring, and homeland security. Recently, lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (LHP-NCs) have emerged as promising scintillator materials. However, the difficulty of affordably upscaling synthesis to the multigram level and embedding NCs in optical-grade nanocomposites without compromising their optical properties still limits their widespread use.

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Unlabelled: In the past 20 years, experimental philosophers have investigated folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, and their compatibility with determinism. To determine whether laypeople are "natural compatibilists" or "natural incompatibilists", they have used vignettes describing agents living in deterministic universes. However, later research has suggested that participants' answers to these studies are plagued with comprehension errors: either people fail to really accept that these universes are deterministic, or they confuse determinism with something else.

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Low-temperature neutron diffraction experiments at [Formula: see text] GPa have been conducted to investigate the magnetic structures of metallic Holmium at high pressures by employing a long d-spacing high-flux diffractometer and a Paris-Edinburgh press cell inside a cryostat. We find that at [Formula: see text] GPa and [Formula: see text] K, no nuclear symmetry change is observed, keeping therefore the hexagonal closed packed (hcp) symmetry at high pressure. Our neutron diffraction data confirm that the ferromagnetic state does not exist.

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Background: This study aims to describe the relationship between life satisfaction, positive affect, depression and anxiety symptoms with sociodemographic, psychosocial and clinical variables, and to identify the relative importance of these predictor groups.

Methods: We evaluated life satisfaction (SWLS), positive affect (PANAS), depressive (PHQ-9), and anxiety (GAI) symptoms and their association with sociodemographic, psychosocial and clinical variables in a multistage, random general population sample of fully functioning individuals aged 60-80 years from the Concepción province and Gran Santiago, Chile ( = 396). We performed weighted multiple regression analysis, considering the complex sample structure with age group, sex, and geographical area, complemented with general and conditional dominance analyses to estimate the relevance of the predictor groups.

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In the past years, psychologists have been increasingly interested in feelings of "being moved" (or "touched") and their impact on cognition and behaviour. However, to better understand their long-term impact, we need a validated measure of participants' disposition to feel "moved". In this paper, we introduce the Geneva Sentimentality Scale (GSS), a measure of participants' disposition to feel moved.

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Background: While there are reviews of the literature on mental health stigma reduction programs, very few have focused on the workplace.

Objective: We sought to identify, describe and compare the main characteristics of the interventions to reduce the stigma towards mental health at work.

Method: The search of original articles (2007 to 2022) was carried out in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases, selecting 25 articles from the key terms: 1.

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Multicomponent nanomaterials consisting of dense scintillating particles functionalized by or embedding optically active conjugated photosensitizers (PSs) for cytotoxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been proposed in the last decade as coadjuvant agents for radiotherapy of cancer. They have been designed to make scintillation-activated sensitizers for ROS production in an aqueous environment under exposure to ionizing radiations. However, a detailed understanding of the global energy partitioning process occurring during the scintillation is still missing, in particular regarding the role of the non-radiative energy transfer between the nanoscintillator and the conjugated moieties which is usually considered crucial for the activation of PSs and therefore pivotal to enhance the therapeutic effect.

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Multicomponent systems consisting of lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (CsPbX-NCs, X = Br, I) grown inside mesoporous silica nanospheres (NSs) with selectively sealed pores combine intense scintillation and strong interaction with ionizing radiation of CsPbX NCs with the chemical robustness in aqueous environment of silica particles, offering potentially promising candidates for enhanced radiotherapy and radio-imaging strategies. We demonstrate that CsPbX NCs boost the generation of singlet oxygen species (O) in water under X-ray irradiation and that the encapsulation into sealed SiO NSs guarantees perfect preservation of the inner NCs after prolonged storage in harsh conditions. We find that the O production is triggered by the electromagnetic shower released by the CsPbX NCs with a striking correlation with the halide composition (I > I Br > Br).

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Colloidal CdTe nanoplatelets featuring a large absorption coefficient and ultrafast tunable luminescence coupled with heavy-metal-based composition present themselves as highly desirable candidates for radiation detection technologies. Historically, however, these nanoplatelets have suffered from poor emission efficiency, hindering progress in exploring their technological potential. Here, we report the synthesis of CdTe nanoplatelets possessing a record emission efficiency of 9%.

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In this work, we report the hot-injection synthesis of CsZnCl colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) with tunable amounts of Cu and Mn substituent cations. All the samples had a rodlike morphology, with a diameter of ∼14 nm and a length of ∼30-100 nm. Alloying did not alter the crystal structure of the host CsZnCl NCs, and Cu ions were mainly introduced in the oxidation state +1 according to X-ray photoelectron and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopies.

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This study analyzed a predictive model of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in a cohort of 244 workers affected by an occupational accident. A longitudinal design with three points in time (i.e.

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Large Stokes shift fast emitters show a negligible reabsorption of their luminescence, a feature highly desirable for several applications such as fluorescence imaging, solar-light managing, and fabricating sensitive scintillating detectors for medical imaging and high-rate high-energy physics experiments. Here we obtain high efficiency luminescence with significant Stokes shift by exploiting fluorescent conjugated acene building blocks arranged in nanocrystals. Two ligands of equal molecular length and connectivity, yet complementary electronic properties, are co-assembled by zirconium oxy-hydroxy clusters, generating crystalline hetero-ligand metal-organic framework (MOF) nanocrystals.

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