Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Up to 78 million batteries will be discarded daily by 2025

About 78 million batteries powering IoT devices will be dumped globally every day by 2025 if nothing is done to improve their lifespan. This dire statistic comes from EnABLES, an EU-funded project that's urging researchers and technologists to take action to ensure that batteries outlive the devices they power.

With devices ranging from temperature and CO2 sensors to asset tracking tags and smart bandages, IoT has the potential to tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. However, if they're to really benefit society, IoT innovations need to address the technology gap that exists in powering the rising number of IoT devices.

The EnABLES researchers outlined their key recommendations for improving IoT device battery lifespans in a recent position paper. The report stresses the need to harvest available energy from the environment to make batteries last longer, while also reducing IoT device energy consumption.

The way toward battery power autonomy

Dr. Giorgos Fagas of Tyndall National Institute at EnABLES project coordinator University College Cork, Ireland, stated in a news item posted on the project website: "Thanks to the EnABLES European Research Infrastructure and its partners, the European Union has already a well-established scientific and technological leadership position in this area. … The EnABLES Paper recommends additional actions to maintain easy and efficient access to the scientific expertise, state-of-the-art facilities and the technology platforms that are already available. To maintain the strategic advantage in Europe and the momentum already created by EnABLES, it is necessary to create a sustainable power IoT infrastructure in the longer term."

The goal is to achieve power autonomy through batteries that can sustainably recharge themselves. The project partners are working to promote "key 'power IoT' advances" to harvest ambient energies such as light, heat and vibration and convert them to electricity. At the same time, they're focusing on minimizing the energy consumed by IoT sensors. The news item provides a striking example of the benefits of sustainably powered IoT infrastructure: "[A] solar panel half the size of a credit card could power a temperature and humidity sensor in an office indefinitely," it states.

At the moment, most devices have an operational life of over 10 years, while the batteries that power them last 2 years or less. The result is multiple battery replacements, with the consequent economic and environmental drawbacks related to the fact that hundreds of millions of batteries need to be manufactured and disposed of every day. Another consequence is device downtime and maintenance trade-offs, and the existence of many unexploited opportunities to use IoT devices in areas such as medicine and environments where a reliable power source throughout the device's lifetime is critical.

"We need to revolutionize the way we design, make, use and get rid of things," observed Mike Hayes, also of Tyndall. "This means we need to think about battery life from the outset, in the early stages of product design. We need to advise key stakeholders and the general public on the implications of battery consumption based on the choices they make, and we need to work together with industry to identify potential for reducing power consumption and requirement." According to Hayes, for IoT sustainability to succeed, "it needs to be done collaboratively and across disciplines," as demonstrated with EnABLES (European Infrastructure Powering the Internet of Things).

A novel approach to wirelessly power wearable devices

Provided by CORDIS

Nimble robotic arms that perform delicate surgery may be one step closer to reality

by Peter Ramjug, Northeastern University

Researchers at Northeastern are working to eliminate the stiff, herky-jerky motions in robotic arms to make them graceful and deft enough to gently pick up an egg or sturdy enough to stack dinner plates. The findings could one day allow doctors to remotely perform surgery on a distant battlefield or help bomb disposal experts safely remove an explosive device.

A video demonstration of a university project involving a researcher wearing a C-shaped gripping claw attached to his right hand while a nearby robotic arm mimicked his exact movements showed the promise of hydraulic technology designed to be low friction.

The researcher in the video lowered and raised his arm, swept it left and right, and bent it at the wrist, smooth actions that were copied in tandem by the robotic arm. What was not readily apparent was how the human operator was able to feel the same forces as the mechanical arm when it closed on an object, allowing the user to get a sense of textured surfaces.

The Northeastern project involves building remote-controlled robot arms that do not have heavy motors traditionally installed in the wrist joints. Instead, they are placed in the base of the machine.

Credit: Northeastern University

"With no motors in the arm, they are much lighter than a traditional arm," says Peter Whitney, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern. "So now if you have a lighter arm, it's much easier to move it around."

The engineering advancement has the potential to overcome a fundamental obstacle humans face when controlling robots remotely—understanding the environment the machine is in.

"It's hard to perceive exactly where the robot is, relative to the environment—whether it's touching something or not, or how or how hard it is touching an object," explains Whitney, whose research is focused on the design of robots, the materials they are made of, and how they are operated and controlled.

"These are all factors that can influence how we can get good performance, but also maintain safety," he adds.

Researchers now have the ability to do machine learning with real-time information that tells how much force is being applied.

"So when we try to grasp an object or manipulate an object, we can actually make use of those contact forces, similar to how human muscles sense forces such as how heavy something is," says Whitney.

Machine learning is an active area of research among Northeastern faculty, Whitney says. He is working with Robert Platt, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, on a National Science Foundation project involving lightweight robots that are better designed for direct, intentional contact with an object.

Whitney is also collaborating with Taskin Padir, associate professor of electrical and computer Engineering, to study the potential for robots that are controlled remotely to be used to physically interact with friends and family, serving as a mechanical stand-in. The technology could allow people to hug a loved one in quarantine as one example of its potential, Whitney says.

Robots get a light touch

Provided by Northeastern University

Activision workers plan walkout to protest sexism

Activision Blizzard employees called for a protest over allegations of discrimination and harassment of female staff members.

Employees at Activision Blizzard planned a work stoppage on Thursday to protest sexism at the video game company, according to a rallying cry echoing on social media.

The Activision Blizzard Walkout for Equality is to last through the work day, with a live event during lunch time hours at the firm's campus in the Southern California city of Irvine.

Organizers expected about 50 people to take part in the campus protest, with others joining virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"It is the responsibility of leadership to stamp out toxicity and harassment in any form, across all levels of the company," Activision Blizzard chief and co-founder Mike Morhaime said in a post over the weekend.

"To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you."

Morhaime acknowledged in the post that harassment and discrimination are prevalent in the video game industry.

The call for a walkout came as workers blasted Activision Blizzard's response to a slew of sexism and harassment complaints in a letter calling its reaction "abhorrent."

Employees at the company demanded that executives "recognize the seriousness of these allegations and demonstrate compassion for victims," according to the letter posted online.

The letter had been signed by more than 2,000 employees by Tuesday, according to media reports.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a civil complaint last week claiming the maker of "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" violated state laws by allowing a "pervasive frat boy workplace culture."

In the latest case highlighting claims of sexism in the video game industry, the lawsuit said the company "fostered a sexist culture and paid women less than men," according to a statement from the state agency.

Activision Blizzard pushed back on the allegations, saying that the lawsuit "includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard's past."

"In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue," it said.

The game company said it had been cooperative with the state agency but that it "rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court."

The employee letter condemned the remarks made by Activision in its defense as "abhorrent and insulting."

Activision did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Activision earnings boom on Call of Duty play

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ACTIVISION

Many parents still believe boys are better, more competitive at sports than girls

by University of Michigan

girl athlete — Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Female Olympian handballers fined for playing in shorts instead of bikini bottoms. A female Paralympian told by a championship official that her shorts were "too short and inappropriate." Olympic women gymnasts, tired of feeling sexualized, opted for full-length unitards instead of bikini-cut leotards.

"Women athletes' attire is constantly scrutinized," said Philip Veliz of the University of Michigan School of Nursing. "No one has ever said that a baseball or football player's pants are too tight."

Research from Veliz and colleagues found that gender stereotypes and double standards, where female athletes are treated differently or aren't taken as seriously as male counterparts, persist even among parents.

The researchers polled more than 3,000 boys and girls aged 7 to 17 and their parents/guardians across the country, and were surprised that roughly one third of parents (32%) believed that boys are better at sports than girls. And parents of youth who have never played sports are more likely to believe that girls are not as competitive as boys and that sports are more important to boys than girls.

While the study did not specifically look at the sexualization of girls in sports, Veliz said these stereotypes can lead to the type of sexualization of female athletes seen in the Olympic uniform controversy, where the Norwegian women's beach handball team was fined for refusing to play in skimpy, mandated bikini outfits.

The study found that gender stereotypes and the dearth of female coaches as role models are among the biggest reasons that girls quit or don't participate in sports, Veliz said.

"The average age that kids enter sports is 6, which requires heavy parental involvement," Veliz said. "If you believe that boys are better than girls, you may be taking girls to a different activity or not doing sports at all."

Girls (43%) are more likely to have never played sports than boys (35%) and less likely to be currently playing sports—36% of girls compared to nearly 46% of boys. Overall, about 40% of youth surveyed said they currently play sports.

"Sport is the most popular extracurricular activity in the United States for both boys and girls. Yet, we see this gender gap in participation persist, and parents may be driving some of this," said Veliz, a research assistant professor at the School of Nursing and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and associate director of the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center.

According to the study, African American and low-income youths overall, but especially girls, were least likely to be current players, and most likely to have never played or dropped out. Boys and girls both reported being teased, but for girls, the teasing was worse for teens than during their younger years.

Veliz said that another problem for girls is the relative lack of female coaches. Only 58% of girls had a female coach, compared to 88% of boys who reported having a male coach.

"We're seeing a big gender disparity between who's coaching boys and girls," he said. "We need to ask why we don't have more female coaches. We should have 88% of girls saying they have a female coach. However, we still see females being underrepresented in coaching at the youth level and beyond."

Veliz said it's important to convince parents that boys and girls are equally interested in sports, and also to eliminate barriers to entry for female coaches. As more female athletes have daughters, this will naturally improve, he said.

"If you have a mom who used to play sports, she will be more likely to say, 'I want my daughter to participate in these activities like I did,'" he said.

Another surprise was that few kids reported quitting sports because of injury for either boys or girls. However, of the 16% of kids who reported experiencing a concussion from sports, over a third quit. While this finding was not broken down by gender, it may be a factor that could differentially funnel girls out of sport, Veliz said.

Indeed, the study found that the average age of kids who quit sports for any reason was 11. This could mean that sports became something different or that it was no longer fun.

"One of the problems with sports in the United States is it's really about the competition, and some kids just want to play for fun," said Veliz, who would like to see kids play until they graduate. "Sports is really the main source of physical activity for kids. It will set the stage for them as they grow up."

The study, "Keeping Girls in the Game: Factors that Influence Sports Participation," is believed to be one of the first to examine factors that influence entry, participation and dropout rates in sports. It was published by the Women's Sports Foundation in partnership with The Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation. WSF was founded by tennis pro Billie Jean King.

Study co-authors are Nicole Zarrett of the University of South Carolina and Don Sabo of D'Youville College.

Playing sports can lead some boys to binge drink

More information: The study is available at www.womenssportsfoundation.org … ummary-FINAL-web.pdf

Provided by University of Michigan

Chronic pain might impact how the brain processes emotions

by Sherry Landow, University of New South Wales

Neurotransmitters help regulate our emotions—but scientists have noticed a disruption to their levels in people with chronic pain.

More than 3 million Australians experience chronic pain, an ongoing and often debilitating condition that can last from months to years. This persistent pain can impact many parts of a person's life, with almost half of people with chronic pain also experiencing major anxiety and depression disorders.

Now, a new study led by UNSW Sydney and NeuRA shows that people with chronic pain have an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions.

This imbalance could be making it harder for them to keep negative emotions in check—and the researchers think persistent pain might be triggering the chemical disruption.

The findings are published today in the European Journal of Pain.

"Chronic pain is more than an awful sensation," says senior author of the study Associate Professor Sylvia Gustin, a neuroscientist and psychologist at UNSW and NeuRA. "It can affect our feelings, beliefs and the way we are.

"We have discovered, for the first time, that ongoing pain is associated with a decrease in GABA, an inhibitive neurotransmitter in the medial prefrontal cortex. In other words, there's an actual pathological change going on."

Neurotransmitters help communicate and balance messages between cells. While some amplify signals (called excitatory neurotransmitters), others weaken them (inhibitive neurotransmitters).

GABA, or γ-aminobutyric acid, is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Its role in the medial prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain where emotional regulation happens—is to help dial down our emotions.

The research team used advanced neurological imaging to scan GABA content in the medial prefrontal cortex of 48 study participants, half of which experienced some form of chronic pain. A/Prof. Gustin says this relatively small sample size is typical for neurological imaging studies, which are costly to run.

The results show that participants with chronic pain had significantly lower levels of GABA than the control group—a pattern that was consistent regardless of their type of chronic pain.

"A decrease in GABA means that the brain cells can no longer communicate to each other properly," says A/Prof. Gustin.

"When there's a decrease in this neurotransmitter, our actions, emotions and thoughts get amplified."

While the link between chronic pain and decreased levels of GABA has previously been found in animal studies, this is the first time it's been translated to human studies.

A/Prof. Gustin says she hopes the findings are encouraging for people with chronic pain who may be experiencing mental health issues.

"It's important to remember it's not you—there's actually something physically happening to your brain," she says.

"We don't know why it happens yet, but we are working on finding solutions on how to change it."

A chain reaction

GABA is one of many neurotransmitters in the medial prefrontal cortex—and it's not the only one behaving differently in people with pain.

In a previous study, A/Prof. Gustin and her team found that levels of glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, are also lower than average in people with chronic pain. These low glutamate levels were linked to increased feelings of fear, worry and negative thinking.

"Together, our studies show there's really a disruption in how the brain cells are talking to each other," says A/Prof. Gustin, who has been researching chronic pain for over 20 years.

"As a result of this disruption, a person's ability to feel positive emotions, such as happiness, motivation and confidence may be taken away—and they can't easily be restored."

A/Prof. Gustin says chronic pain is likely to be the culprit behind these neurological changes. However, this theory could only be tested by scanning participants' brains both before and after they develop chronic pain—and as brain imaging is expensive to conduct, it's unlikely such a large-scale project would be possible without major funding.

"Everything starts with stress," she says. "When someone is in pain, it increases stress hormones like cortisol, which can trigger massive increases in glutamate. This happens during the initial, acute stage of pain.

"Too much glutamate can be toxic to brain cells and brain function. We think this disruption to normal brain function may cause the GABA and glutamate levels to change—and impair a person's ability to regulate their emotions."

A new form of treatment

Medication is often used to help treat chronic pain, but there are currently no drugs that directly target the GABA and glutamate content in the medial prefrontal cortex. Instead, medication affects the entire central nervous system, and may come with side effects.

A/Prof. Gustin and her team have recently developed an online emotional recovery program, specifically targeted at people with chronic pain, as a non-pharmaceutical option for treating the neurotransmitter disruption.

The findings will be presented in a paper later this year, but the initial results are encouraging.

"The online therapy program teaches people skills to help self-regulate their negative emotions," says A/Prof. Gustin, who welcomes people interested in learning more about the program to contact the team.

"The brain can't dampen down these feelings on its own, but it is plastic—and we can learn to change it."

Neurotransmitter levels predict math ability

More information: David Kang et al, Disruption to normal excitatory and inhibitory function within the medial prefrontal cortex in people with chronic pain, European Journal of Pain (2021). DOI: 10.1002/ejp.1838

Provided by University of New South Wales

Who's most likely to get bullied at school?

by Cara Murez Healthday Reporter

Bullying remains a threat to American teens, and a new study reveals which kids may be at highest risk.

Race-based bullying takes a heavy toll on teens, the research found, but minority kids who are picked on for other reasons—whether gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or immigration status—suffer a double whammy.

Victims' physical and mental health suffer as their exposure to violence rises, according to a survey of high school students in Pennsylvania. They're also more likely to become violent themselves.

"Oftentimes, there is a focus on really trying to capture or assess the consequences of identity-based bullying based on a single aspect of someone's identity, and we know that people are multifaceted, right? There are multiple social identities," said researcher Chardée Galán, who studied the issue while at the University of Pittsburgh. She's now an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

To evaluate the impact of bullying, her team surveyed nearly 4,000 ninth- through 12th-graders at 13 public high schools in Pittsburgh.

Almost 10% of the students reported experiencing race-based bullying, and nearly 6% had bullied someone because of their race, the study found. Young people who were part of several stigmatized groups had even higher rates of bullying.

More than one-third of respondents identified as Black; about 53% were assigned female at birth; 32% belonged to a sexual minority; and 10% were gender diverse, meaning they identified other than male or female alone.

Many of the victims did not seek medical attention, the study authors noted.

"We looked at their engagement with health care systems, which is really important to consider these youth within these larger oppressive systems and practices," Galán said. "They were also more likely to forgo medical care, which is really important for us when we try to consider how do we actually interact with these youth and engage with these youth as doctors, as physicians, as clinical providers."

The survey linked bullying with self-harm, suicidal thoughts and greater involvement in violence. That included threatening or injuring someone else with a weapon or surviving such an attack, as well as fighting, sexual assault, intimate-partner abuse or experiencing the slaying of a friend or family member.

Galán said those working with students often use a colorblind approach to dealing with problems, but there's a pitfall: It tends to ignore that specific students might have unique experiences that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

She said it is important to continue to push for antiracist practices in schools and understanding youth within larger oppressive systems. The next step is attempting to dismantle the forces driving the inequities, Galán said.

Gender-diverse Black and Hispanic youth reported the highest rates of being bullied and of bullying, the survey found.

"This emphasizes the fact that these experiences of discrimination, including discrimination based on one's gender or sexual orientation, should really be incorporated and considered as parts of programs that address race-based discrimination," Galán said.

That's important when thinking about the "school-to-prison pipeline" or the likelihood that some youth might be funneled into the criminal justice system or to respond to discrimination with potentially problematic behaviors, Galán said.

The study was published online July 23 in JAMA Network Open.

Sandra Graham, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote an editorial that accompanied the findings.

Graham said the rise in hate crimes associated with COVID-19 make this a critical time for taking the study of identity-based bullying in new directions.

It's important that students who are being bullied know that they shouldn't blame themselves, she noted.

"We need to be working very, very hard to change the social norms in schools," Graham said. "It is not OK to pick on other kids."

Graham said schools need to have more racial and ethnic diversity so groups are relatively equal in size. Instruction and activities should be organized so there is less emphasis on who has authority to shape the norms and who doesn't.

"You just have to make sure that the activities that are available in your school are available to everybody so that there's more sharing and more equality," she said.

Graham added that this could be by race, but also by all of the other dimensions of different kids in school.

"Schools have to be really sensitive to that," she said. "The main thing is that kids have to be learning tolerance for people who are different from them because the main determinant is the imbalance of power."

Has the COVID-19 pandemic lessened bullying at school?

More information: Chardée A. Galán et al, Exploration of Experiences and Perpetration of Identity-Based Bullying Among Adolescents by Race/Ethnicity and Other Marginalized Identities, JAMA Network Open (2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.16364

Journal information: JAMA Network Open

Exploring empathy in everyday life

by Tina Adamopoulos, University of Toronto

Researchers at the University of Toronto are studying our capacity for empathy, or our ability to sense and understand someone else's emotions, and are debunking some common misconceptions along the way.

Their work, recently published in the journal Psychological Science, is potentially important since empathy is fundamental to maintaining meaningful and healthy relationships, making it a big part of our daily lives.

"We want to get a description of empathy by looking at it in everyday life, across different emotions and social contexts," says Greg Depow, a Ph.D. student who is studying social psychology at U of T Scarborough.

"We want to study empathy more in environments closer to how it is actually experienced in real life."

The study, which was co-authored with Professor Michael Inzlicht, looked at perceptions of empathy in 246 American adults. Depow says one goal of the research is to fill in gaps from previous work to offer a deeper, more authentic view of empathy. This was done by looking at who is more likely to be empathetic and how often we take the opportunity to empathize per day. The research also looked at how empathy impacts subjective well-being, which is the scientific term for happiness and sense of purpose in life.

Opportunities to empathize with others occur when one observes the emotions of another person or stranger. This can be done in person or even on social media—for example, when you notice a friend's emotional status or posts.

The researchers found that people will empathize when they recognize the opportunity to do so, but often notice other people's emotions without flagging them as opportunities to empathize.

"People were seeing these emotional experiences of other people, but weren't flagging them as opportunities to empathize," Depow says. "If you crunch the numbers a bit, it seems as though a third of emotions people see in daily life are not seen as empathy opportunities."

Learning what differentiates missed and flagged opportunities may be key to learning how to recognize and provide opportunities empathy more successfully, Depow says.

"One thing that I'm interested in is differentiating missed opportunities from the ones people are noticing. This is important because people may be missing opportunities to connect with others and promote happiness for both parties."

While previous studies have typically focused on how empathy is measured based on the suffering of strangers and its effects on the empathizer, it turns out people are three times more likely to empathize with positive emotions than negative ones.

"If I look just at negative emotions that people are empathizing with, that's actually associated with reduced subjective well-being," Depow says. "[But] because people are empathizing with positive emotions three times as often, overall empathy is associated with increased subjective well-being."

Who we empathize with is also an important factor. Most studies tend to focus on how people empathize with strangers, but Depow says the evidence shows that people are more likely to support those who are close to them.

He adds that confidence appears to affect our experience with empathy. People who are confident about their experiences seem to experience increased levels of well-being.

"People find empathy difficult more or less in different situations and that seems to change people's experience of empathy and the extent to which they empathize."

The researchers also found that receiving empathy ourselves may make us more receptive to empathizing with others. By contrast, those who empathized with others were no more or less likely to notice another opportunity to empathize with someone else.

Childhood empathy important predictor of aggression

More information: Gregory John Depow et al, The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life, Psychological Science (2021). DOI: 10.1177/0956797621995202

Journal information: Psychological Science

Provided by University of Toronto

Leader effectiveness may depend on emotional expression

by Holly Ober, University of California - Riverside

office group — Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Women leaders must often battle sexist stereotypes that label them "too emotional" for effective leadership. A surprising new study shows that when they express calm, happy emotions, however, women are perceived as more effective leaders than men. The effect is most pronounced for leaders in top positions in an organization.

The study, conducted by psychology professor Thomas Sy at UC Riverside and management professor Daan van Knippenberg at Drexel University, is the first to examine prototypes for the types of emotions displayed by leaders and concludes that people use implicit theories of leadership emotions when evaluating leader effectiveness.

Cognitive leadership prototypes, known as implicit theories of leadership, have been well-studied. Research consistently finds that effective leaders are seen as intelligent, dynamic, and charismatic, among other qualities. Men are also thought to be seen as possessing more of these qualities than women.

It is commonly understood that some types of emotional expression can diminish perceptions of leader effectiveness. Sy, an organizational psychologist who studies leadership, wondered if people also have implicit emotional prototypes, or schemas, that influence how they react to leaders.

With van Knippenberg, he designed a series of studies that asked respondents to describe what types of emotions leaders feel and express. The results revealed six emotional schemas associated with leadership. Three of them—cheer, calm, pride—were associated with effective leadership. The other three—anger, fear, remorse—were associated with ineffective leadership.

"Every role has emotions that must be expressed, including leaders. To be effective, leaders must perform emotional labor," Sy said. "What was surprising in our research is that women were rated more effective, and this could be explained by implicit theories of leadership emotions."

Although men have more leeway for expressing negative emotions, Sy and van Knippenberg found that when women don't express negative emotions they are seen as more effective than men.

Implicit theories of leadership emotions had the most impact on perceptions of leadership effectiveness for leaders at the highest levels of management. Moreover, expression of negative emotions did not undermine the effectiveness of top leaders to the same extent they did for low-ranking leaders. Low-ranking leaders, both men and women, were penalized for expressing anger.

"When we interact with a leader regularly, such as our immediate boss or supervisor, we have enough firsthand information to evaluate their effectiveness," Sy said. "But we usually have little contact with leaders at the highest levels and less information about them. Therefore we tend to rely on schemas. Schemas are powerful. Even in the absence of data they shape our behavior."

Implicit theories of leadership emotions influence perceptions of effectiveness, with positive schemas associated with positive outcomes and negative schemas associated with negative outcomes.

"Past research shows the emotions of a leader affect performance of followers," Sy said. "The leader's emotions are contagious, spread throughout the team, and affect effectiveness of the whole group."

The findings should help leaders manage their emotions to maximize effectiveness, improve the performance and satisfaction of team members, and provide a roadmap for future leadership researchers.

The paper, "The emotional leader: Implicit theories of leadership emotions and leadership perceptions" is published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Narcissists are drawn to leadership theories

More information: Thomas Sy et al, The emotional leader: Implicit theories of leadership emotions and leadership perceptions, Journal of Organizational Behavior (2021). DOI: 10.1002/job.2543

Provided by University of California - Riverside

Animals are better sprinters than humans

by University of Cologne

An interdisciplinary group of scientists from the universities of Cologne, Koblenz, Tübingen, and Stuttgart has studied the characteristics determining the maximum running speed in animals. The model they developed explains why humans cannot keep up with the fastest sprinters in the animal kingdom. Based on these calculations, the giant spider Shelob from "The Lord of the Rings" would have reached a maximum speed of 60 km/h.

Many four-legged mammals can reach considerably higher running speeds than two-legged humans. Animals perfectly adapted to sprinting, such as cheetahs or antelopes, are characterized by a slender body shape, long legs, and a particularly mobile spine to achieve very high speeds when running. An interdisciplinary team including researchers at the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology has now developed a model that takes these characteristics into account and can calculate the maximum running speeds for animals of any size. The results of their research have been published in the article "Rules of nature's Formula Run: Muscle mechanics during late stance is the key to explaining maximum running speed" in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

The Tokyo Olympics are just around the corner, and one of the highlights will be the men's 100-meter sprint. Top sprinters can reach running speeds of almost 45 km/h. That sounds impressive, but actually is not when compared to sprinting performance in the animal kingdom. It is only roughly equivalent to the top speed of a domestic cat. Cheetahs can run more than twice as fast (over 100 km/h), but other animals such as antelopes (90 km/h), or even warthogs and hares (just under 60 km/h) would outrun human sprinters.

The research team led by Dr. Michael Günther (University of Stuttgart) investigated the physical and biological factors on which the top speed of these animals depend. In the process, the researchers developed comprehensive answers to questions about the importance of body design, such as: "Why are natural maximum speeds achieved by medium-sized animals?" "Which main characteristics determine the maximum running speed?" and "What characteristics set limits to speed?"

The core of their theoretical work is the physical balance of propulsive leg force and air resistance to be overcome, as well as the inertia of the propelling muscles. They show a kind of main pathway for changing the structural shape of animal bodies as a function of body size (allometry) in adaptation to fast leg-driven locomotion. "This main pathway describes how the shape of an organism must change as a function of body size in order to achieve a high running speed, and how specific shapes affect the maximum speed that can be achieved," said Dr. Tom Weihmann from the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology.

The classic example is the mouse and the elephant. An elephant-sized mouse would simply not be viable because its bones would break under their own weight. Elephants have much thicker and heavier bones relative to their weight as well as much longer and more straightened legs. These features make the enormous size of the animals possible. However, heavy bones and straight legs limit their top speed, which is much lower than that of cheetahs—even though elephant legs are much longer.

However, top speeds depend not only on size but also on construction, such as the number of legs and the mobility of the spine. For example, many four-legged mammals are able to reach much higher running speeds than bipedal designs such as humans and birds because they can gallop, using their trunk muscles for propulsion. "If the animals become too heavy, however, even more powerful muscles won't help because larger muscles take more time to contract at top speed. Accordingly, the weight limit above which sprinting speeds start to decrease again is around 50 kg, which is fairly close to the average weight of cheetahs and pronghorns, the fastest sprinters on our planet," Weihmann explained.

The model can even be applied to fantasy creatures. For example, the giant spider Shelob from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings' would be able to reach a top speed of about 60 km/h. In terms of human body geometry, the model shows that top sprinters in sports are already very close to their speed optimum. Apart from technical applications like special running shoes or exoskeletons, providing lengthening levers or additional elasticity, only longer legs or more elastic tendons would allow even higher speeds.

A speedy trial: What it takes to be the fastest land predator

More information: Michael Günther et al, Rules of nature's Formula Run: Muscle mechanics during late stance is the key to explaining maximum running speed, Journal of Theoretical Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110714

Journal information: Journal of Theoretical Biology

Provided by University of Cologne

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