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Gratitude has been investigated in various areas in psychology. The present research showed that gratitude had some positive effects on some aspects of our life, such as subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and social relationships. It can also help us relieve negative emotions. However, the existing literature has not studied the influence of gratitude on envy. The present study used structural equation modeling to test the mediating role of social support between gratitude and two types of envy (malicious and benign). We recruited 426 Chinese undergraduates to complete the Gratitude Questionnaire, Malicious and Benign Envy Scales, and the Multi-Dimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Results showed that gratitude positively predicted benign envy and negatively predicted malicious envy. In addition, the indirect effect of gratitude on two types of envy via social support was significant. These results revealed the direct relationship between gratitude and malicious/benign envy, and the mediating effect of social support, which will contribute to find effective measures to inhibit malicious envy and promote benign envy from the perspective of cultivating gratitude and increasing individuals' social support.

The semi-global output consensus problem for multiagent systems depicted by discrete-time dynamics subject to external disturbances and input saturation over switching networks is investigated in this paper. Assume that only a small part of subsystems have directly received the output of the exosystem. The distributed consensus algorithms are proposed by adopting the low-gain state feedback and the modified algebraic Riccati equation. Then, the outputs of all subsystems can reach synchronization asymptotically with those of the exosystem by using the proposed consensus protocols on some preconditions. Both the connected switching networks and the jointly connected switching networks are considered for the semi-global output consensus problem, respectively. Some numerical simulation results are shown to validate the theoretical analysis.

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Oil leakage is a global environmental issue and happens frequently, resulting in a waste of oil resources and even threatening the safety of marine creatures and humans. Because of unidirectional oil transportation performance, “oil-diode” Janus membranes have attracted lots of attention for oil/water separation. However, the hydrophobic side of traditional “oil-diode” Janus membrane is completely hydrophobic, resulting in an easy permeation of oil, which hampers light oil recycling. Herein, we provide a facile approach to develop “oil-diode” Janus membranes with the special wettable structure for fast oil refining. The material characteristics and surface wettability of the membranes that generate superimposed efforts are vital to fabricate “oil-diode” Janus membranes. Interestingly, the manufactured membranes exhibit extra-high oil intrusion pressure up to 12 kPa and present high permeance of about 2993 L m–2 h–1 bar–1 in separating stable water-in-oil emulsion containing surfactant and separation efficiency up to 99.6%, thereby showing promising potential in oil recovery and refining.