It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
Men’s financial decisions affected by emotional news
Emotional news hits men harder, spilling into financial decisions
University of Essex
Emotional news stories have a strong impact on men’s financial decisions, according to new research.
The study, led by the University of Essex, revealed that men are far more likely than women to let emotions from one situation carry over into unrelated risky decisions.
After watching real-life negative news stories, men avoided financial risks even when the decisions were completely unrelated to the news. However, the opposite was true for women, whose decisions were unaffected.
“These results challenge the long-held stereotype that women are more emotional and opens new avenues for understanding how emotions influence decision making across genders,” said lead researcher Dr Nikhil Masters, from Essex’s Department of Economics.
In the study, 186 people watched emotional news stories and were then asked to make risky financial decisions with real money. Interestingly, women’s financial decisions remained unaffected by the emotional tone of the news, while men showed a clear tendency to play it safe.
The findings from this study could shape advice for high-stakes financial decisions.
“We don’t make choices in a vacuum and a cooling-off period might be crucial after encountering emotionally charged situations, especially for life-changing financial commitments like buying a home or large investments,” Dr Masters added.
The research team, which involved academics from the University of Nottingham and Bournemouth University, now wants to investigate why only men are affected by these carryover effects.
“Previous research has shown that emotional intelligence helps people to manage their emotions more effectively. Since women generally score higher on emotional intelligence tests, this could explain the big differences we see between men and women,” said Dr Masters.
Your work habits may be threatening your sleep, USF research shows
Sedentary employees and those working nontraditional hours are more prone to sleep issues
University of South Florida
image:
University of South Florida scholar Claire Smith presents her research findings at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference in 2023.
TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 7, 2025) – People whose jobs are highly sedentary – an estimated 80% of the modern workforce – experience a much higher risk of insomnia symptoms, according to a new study led by University of South Florida psychologist Claire Smith.
The findings, newly published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, show that among more than 1,000 employees surveyed over a decade, sedentary work and nonstandard work times are significant threats to sleep health.
Those two factors, hastened by technological changes such as increased computer work, are linked to a 37% increase in insomnia symptoms among sedentary workers and a 66% greater risk of needing “catch-up sleep” – defined as frequent napping or sleeping in on weekends – for those who keep nontraditional work schedules.
"The way we are designing work poses serious, long-term threats to healthy sleep,” Smith said. “Healthy sleep involves more than just getting your eight hours. It’s also falling asleep easily, sleeping through the night and having a consistent sleep schedule. Companies should be aware of the specific sleep risks of their workforce to improve detection and intervention."
The research, based on data from the national Midlife in the United States study, identified three sleep health categories among workers over a 10-year period: good sleepers, catch-up sleepers and insomnia-like sleepers.
The study found that sedentary work is strongly linked to the insomnia sleeper category, characterized by symptoms such as difficulty falling asleep, interrupted sleep and frequent daytime tiredness. Meanwhile, employees with nontraditional schedules, such as working night shifts, were more likely to fall into the catch-up sleeper group.
Smith said the research suggests that moving your body during the workday and limiting after-hours work may not just help you sleep well that night but protect against ongoing sleep problems a decade later.
The study also shows that workers who fall into a pattern of poor sleep due to their job design, such as long hours of sedentary work or erratic schedules, may end up stuck in such unhealthy patterns for years. For example, 90% of insomnia-like sleepers saw their symptoms persist 10 years later.
“This is particularly important for both employers and employees, since research shows that poor sleep health is known to impact productivity, well-being and overall health,” said Smith, who led the project in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of experts in psychology, psychiatry, aging and medicine.
She added that the findings suggest redesigning jobs with sleep health in mind could be key to improving worker well-being and underscore the need for workplace interventions that consider sleep health as a dynamic, multifaceted issue, rather than a one-size-fits-all problem.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging and included researchers from Penn State University, University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State University and St. Anne’s University (Czech Republic).
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About the University of South Florida
The University of South Florida, a high-impact research university dedicated to student success and committed to community engagement, generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. Across campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and USF Health, USF serves approximately 50,000 students who represent nearly 150 different countries. U.S. News & World Report has ranked USF as one of the nation’s top 50 public universities for six consecutive years and, for the second straight year, as the best value university in Florida. In 2023, USF became the first public university in Florida in nearly 40 years to be invited to join the Association of American Universities, a group of the leading 3% of universities in the United States and Canada. With an all-time high of $692 million in research funding in 2023 and a ranking as a top 15 public university for producing new U.S. patents, USF is a leader in solving global problems and improving lives. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu
Journal
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Designing work for healthy sleep: A multidimensional, latent transition approach to employee sleep health
New research uncovers the impact of external rivalries on workplace collaboration
Strategic Management Society
A recent study published in the Strategic Management Journal reveals that employees' external affiliations with rival organizations can significantly hinder collaboration within their primary workplace. This research, conducted by Thorsten Grohsjean (Bocconi University), Henning Piezunka (The Wharton School), and Maren Mickeler (ESSEC Business School), sheds light on how competitive external relationships disrupt internal teamwork, offering crucial insights for managers across industries.
The study examines a phenomenon often overlooked: colleagues who, outside of their workplace, are affiliated with organizations that compete with one another. Using the professional soccer industry as a testing ground, the researchers found that these dual-affiliated employees were less likely to collaborate effectively when working for their shared employer. The research highlights the dual impact of external competition and personal rivalries, which spill over into workplace dynamics.
The findings underscore the need for organizations to proactively manage the interplay between employees’ internal roles and their external affiliations. Leaders can:
Monitor Cross-Affiliations: Track employees’ external engagements that may intersect with rival organizations.
Foster a Unified Identity: Strengthen the organization’s internal culture to reduce the influence of external rivalries.
Encourage Open Dialogue: Provide platforms for employees to address potential conflicts stemming from dual affiliations.
“Extra-organizational affiliations are a hidden but pervasive factor affecting workplace dynamics,” said Thorsten Grohsjean, lead author of the study. “Managers must recognize and address these affiliations to mitigate their impact on internal collaboration.”
About the Study
The researchers analyzed data from over 3,500 soccer matches in Europe’s top leagues, leveraging a unique context where club teammates also competed as national rivals during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The study’s design allowed for a quasi-experimental approach, isolating the effects of competitive affiliations on collaboration.
The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is the leading global member organization fostering and supporting rigorous and practice-engaged strategic management research. SMS enjoys the support of 3,000 members, representing more than 1,100 institutions and companies in more than 70 countries. SMS publishes three leading academic journals in partnership with Wiley: Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Global Strategy Journal. These journals publish top-quality work applicable to researchers and practitioners with complementary access for all SMS Members. The SMS Explorer offers the latest insights and takeaways from the SMS Journals for business practitioners, consultants, and academics.
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Driving autonomous vehicles to a more efficient future
Reducing aerodynamic drag caused by externally mounted sensors
American Institute of Physics
image:
Deformation control volumes are set for the front sensor, front-side sensor, roof sensor, and rear-side sensor, which significantly impact the aerodynamic drag coefficient. The sensor shapes can be modified by adjusting the control points on these control volumes.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7, 2025 –Thanks to the rapid progress of information technology and artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been taking off. In fact, AV technology is now advanced enough that the vehicles are being used for logistics delivery and low-speed public transportation.
While most research has focused on control algorithms to heighten safety, less attention has been directed at improving aerodynamic performance, which is essential for lowering energy consumption and extending driving range. As a result, aerodynamic drag issues have been preventing self-driving vehicles from keeping pace with regular vehicle acceleration.
In Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, researchers from Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China, focused on enhancing the aerodynamic performance of AVs by reducing drag induced by externally mounted sensors such as cameras and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) instruments, which are necessary for AV functionality.
“Externally mounted sensors significantly increase aerodynamic drag, particularly by increasing the proportion of interference drag within the total aerodynamic drag,” said author Yiping Wang. “Considering these factors — the interactions among sensors and the impact of geometric dimensions on interference drag — it is essential to perform a comprehensive optimization of the sensors during the design phase.”
The researchers used a combination of computational and experimental methods. After establishing an automated computational platform, they combined the experimental design with a substitute model and an optimization algorithm to improve the structural shapes of AV sensors. Finally, they performed simulations of both the baseline and optimized models, analyzing the effects of drag reduction and examining the improvements in the aerodynamic performance of the optimized model. They used a wind tunnel experiment to validate the reliability of their findings.
After optimizing the design, researchers found a 3.44% decrease in the total aerodynamic drag of an AV. Compared with the baseline model, the optimized model reduced the aerodynamic drag coefficient by 5.99% in simulations and significantly improved aerodynamic performance in unsteady simulations.
The team also observed improvements in airflow, with less turbulence around the sensors and better pressure distribution at the back of the vehicle.
“Looking ahead, our findings could inform the design of more aerodynamically efficient autonomous vehicles, enabling them to travel longer distances,” said Wang. “This is especially important as the adoption of autonomous vehicles increases, not only in passenger transport but also in delivery and logistics applications.”
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The article “Numerical and experimental investigations of the aerodynamic drag characteristics and reduction of an autonomous vehicle” is authored by Jian Zhao, Chuqi Su, Xun Liu, Junyan Wang, Dongxu Tang, and Yiping Wang. The article will appear in Physics of Fluids on Jan. 7, 2025 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0242941). After that date, it can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0242941.
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Physics of Fluids is devoted to the publication of original theoretical, computational, and experimental contributions to the dynamics of gases, liquids, and complex fluids. See https://aip.scitation.org/journal/phf.
Numerical and experimental investigations of the aerodynamic drag characteristics and reduction of an autonomous vehicle
Article Publication Date
7-Jan-2025
Macronutrients in human milk exposed to antidepressant and anti-inflammatory medications
JAMA Network
About The Study:
In this cross-sectional study, some maternal medications were associated with lower levels of protein and fat in milk, which could impose health risks for breastfed infants. Other factors that could influence macronutrient levels need to be clarified before the clinical implications of these findings can be confirmed.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Essi Whaites Heinonen, MD, PhD, email essi.heinonen@ki.se.
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.
Journal
JAMA Network Open
Trash to treasure: Leveraging industrial waste to store energy
Northwestern researchers introduce new players in the field of green batteries
First time unwanted organic waste product used in redox flow battery research
Battery discharged over 350 times without losing capacity to store energy
Organic redox flow batteries are nearing commercial viability for grid-scale applications
EVANSTON, Ill. --- The batteries used in our phones, devices and even cars rely on metals like lithium and cobalt, sourced through intensive and invasive mining. As more products begin to depend on battery-based energy storage systems, shifting away from metal-based solutions will be critical to facilitating the green energy transition.
Now, a team at Northwestern University has transformed an organic industrial-scale waste product into an efficient storage agent for sustainable energy solutions that can one day be applied at much larger scales. While many iterations of these batteries, called redox flow batteries, are in production or being researched for grid-scale applications, using a waste molecule — triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) — marked a first in the field.
Thousands of tons of the well-known chemical byproduct are produced each year by many organic industrial synthesis processes — including the production of some vitamins, among other things — but it is rendered useless and must be carefully discarded following production.
In a paper published today (Jan. 7) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a “one-pot” reaction allows chemists to turn TPPO into a usable product with powerful potential to store energy, opening the door for viability of waste-derived organic redox flow batteries, a long-imagined battery type.
“Battery research has traditionally been dominated by engineers and materials scientists,” said Northwestern chemist and lead author Christian Malapit. “Synthetic chemists can contribute to the field by molecularly engineering an organic waste product into an energy-storing molecule. Our discovery showcases the potential of transforming waste compounds into valuable resources, offering a sustainable pathway for innovation in battery technology.”
Malapit is an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
A small part of the battery market at present, the market for redox flow batteries is expected to rise by 15% between 2023 and 2030 to reach a value of 700 million euros worldwide. Unlike lithium and other solid-state batteries which store energy in electrodes, redox flow batteries use a chemical reaction to pump energy back and forth between electrolytes, where their energy is stored. Though not as efficient at energy storage, redox flow batteries are thought to be much better solutions for energy storage at a grid scale.
“Not only can an organic molecule be used, but it can also achieve high-energy density — getting closer to its metal-based competitors — along with high stability,” said Emily Mahoney, a Ph.D. candidate in the Malapit lab and the paper’s first author. “These two parameters are traditionally challenging to optimize together, so being able to show this for a molecule that is waste-derived is particularly exciting.”
To achieve both energy density and stability, the team needed to identify a strategy that allowed electrons to pack tightly together in the solution without losing storage capacity over time. They looked to the past and found a paper from 1968 describing the electrochemistry of phosphine oxides and, according to Mahoney, “ran with it.”
Then, to evaluate the molecule’s resilience as a potential energy-storage agent, the team ran tests using static electrochemical charge and discharge experiments similar to the process of charging a battery, using the battery, and then charging it again, over and over. After 350 cycles, the battery maintained remarkable health, losing negligible capacity over time.
“This is the first instance of utilizing phosphine oxides — a functional group in organic chemistry — as the redox-active component in battery research,” Malapit said. “Traditionally, reduced phosphine oxides are highly unstable. Our molecular engineering approach addresses this instability, paving the way for their application in energy storage.”
In the meantime, the group hopes other researchers will pick up the charge and begin to work with TPPO to further optimize and improve its potential.
The research was supported by a start-up grant from Northwestern, the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DE-FG02-99ER14999) and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
New research improves predictions for solid waste management
North Carolina State University
A new approach for predicting the contents of municipal solid waste can help improve the efficiency of recycling and landfill operations. The new method applies a conventional approach to forecasting how many total tons of solid waste will be generated at the county level and incorporates a separate, complimentary model that predicts the makeup of the waste with an unprecedented level of detail.
“The effect of our new approach is that solid waste managers can forecast a detailed breakdown of the different materials that will make up the waste stream in addition to the overall tonnage of waste they might expect in the coming year,” says Adolfo Escobedo, co-author of a paper on the work and an associate professor in North Carolina State University’s Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
“The diverse materials that end up in the waste stream are managed differently, particularly when attempting to implement a sustainable operation,” says Joshua Grassel, corresponding author of the paper and a Ph.D. student in the operations research graduate program at NC State. “It’s useful for managers to have a good idea of what sorts of materials they’ll be getting, and in what amounts, so that they can plan for how to process those materials. Some things can be recycled, some can be composted, and so on. Different types of infrastructure are required to process the array of materials, and proper planning is critical for making sustainable waste management a practical reality.”
Historically, waste managers have relied on simple models for forecasting the overall tonnage of solid waste that will be produced each year at the county level. But attempts to predict the composition of that waste have been somewhat limited, with few models attempting to break the overall waste stream down in any significant detail.
“One of the problems that previous modeling attempts ran into was that they were trying to predict the amount of each material present in the waste stream directly,” Escobedo says. “In other words, they were trying to predict how many tons there would be of each category of waste. This was challenging, even when evaluating only a limited number of categories. We took a different approach, adopting a two-phased strategy.”
Specifically, the researchers tailored a model to focus on solid waste composition by evaluating what proportion of the waste would fall under each waste category. The end result is capable of estimating municipal solid waste composition across 43 comprehensive material categories, ranging from aluminum cans to food waste.
Users can then couple the outputs from the waste composition model with predictions of total solid waste from well-established techniques.
“For example, if the model for waste tonnage predicts there will be 1,000 tons of solid waste, and the composition model predicts that 25% of the waste will be food waste, you end up with a prediction of 250 tons of food waste,” Grassel says.
“In addition to providing new insights for waste managers, this is a significant advance because there had previously been no central repository of data on waste compositions,” Escobedo says. “Lack of easy access to data has hampered efforts to develop robust solid waste forecasting tools. So a secondary, supplementary contribution here has been to compile this data and make it publicly available. It was certainly valuable in developing our modeling toolkit, and we’re optimistic it will facilitate additional work by other researchers in the field.”
To validate their approach, the researchers ran three case studies using real-world data.
“The results are promising – we certainly established proof-of-concept for this approach to solid waste forecasting,” Grassel says.
“However, we also know there is substantial room for improvement. We are already working with colleagues to incorporate more nuanced statistical modeling techniques to this framework – and are receptive to collaboration opportunities,” Escobedo says.
The paper, “Predicting the Composition of Solid Waste at the County Scale,” is published in the journal Waste Management. The paper was co-authored by Rajesh Buch of Arizona State University (ASU). The authors wish to acknowledge the Arizona Board of Regents for partially funding the work as part of project TRIF: Supporting and Increasing Recycling Around Arizona. They also acknowledge the other contributing members of the project team at ASU (Jen Clifton, Kazi Wahadul Hassan, Teja Phani Kumar Kadimi, Pitu Mirchandani, and Nivedita Rengarajan), at Northern Arizona University (Darren Bingham and Richard Rushforth), and at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (J.B. Shaw).
Predicting the Composition of Solid Waste at the County Scale
Early cancer screening could save Canadian healthcare system nearly half a billion dollars over patients’ lifetime
Expensive, lifesaving treatments could be drastically reduced if Canada followed the U.S. model and started screening for breast cancer at 40
University of Ottawa
Cancer screening is key to saving patients’ lives since an earlier stage diagnosis improves survival rates, decreases morbidity, and leads to less intensive treatments. Early detection also has the potential to save Canada’s health care system major money. The United States adopted breast cancer screening for women in their Forties due to an increase in the incidence of breast cancer in younger women, with recent research from the University of Ottawa confirming this rise.
Lead author Dr. Anna Wilkinson, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) and a GP oncologist at The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) Cancer Centre and with a team of researchers from uOttawa, including Dr. Jean Seely, and TOH – including Dr. Moira Rushton, a medical oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre – collaborated with Sunnybrook Research Institute to examine the cost-effectiveness of breast cancer treatments at an earlier stage.
Question: What are the proven benefits of early detection of breast cancer? Anna Wilkinson: “When breast cancers are detected at an early stage, less intensive treatments can be employed such as lumpectomies instead of mastectomies, single (sentinel) node biopsies instead of removing all the lymph nodes in the armpit, and often omitting chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
“Breast cancer survival is predicated by stage at diagnosis: the 5-year net survival for stage I breast cancer is 100 percent which, subsequently, declines to 92%, 74% and 23% with stage II, III and IV breast cancers.”
Q: Why was it important to review the costs of screening now? AW: “Recent debate over whether women aged 40 to 49 should be screened for breast cancer has crystallised the importance of understanding the economics of screening. In investigating this topic, we realised that cost effectiveness analyses are outdated and do not reflect expensive new advances that have become standard of care.”
Q: What are the most recent advances and why has cost effectiveness not been incorporated? AW: “The last few years have seen an explosion in exciting innovations in breast cancer treatment, which have resulted in improved breast cancer survival. These treatment successes translate into skyrocketing cost increases for advanced stage breast cancers. For example, new targeted therapies for high-risk stage II and III hormone sensitive breast cancers can cost nearly $142K over two years and over $210K for three years in the metastatic setting. A highly effective antibody drug conjugate for HER2 positive and HER2 low breast has a cost of $166K for one year of therapy and immunotherapy for triple negative breast cancer is $153K for one year of therapy. Stage IV costs for certain subtypes can rise past $500,000.
“Traditional costing models use population-level databases that have inherent time lags in data availability and do not reflect rapidly evolving costs. Our costing calculations were unique because all costs along the breast cancer continuum were included such as: diagnosis; pathology; radiology; surgery; radiation oncology; hospital stay; pharmacy; nursing; and palliative care costs.”
Q: What kind of savings do you foresee? AW: “We found that screening a cohort of women annually for breast cancer starting at age 40 to 74 saves the Canadian health care system $459.6M over these women’s lifetime with 3,499 breast cancer deaths averted and 52,367 life years gained. This translates into a savings of $1, 880 for every women screened. The costs of screening mammograms and diagnostics are easily offset by treating cancers at earlier stages when it is less expensive.”
Q: What kind of impact could early screening policy for breast cancer and other diseases have? AW: “In an era where we will continue to see ever-more expensive, rapidly evolving treatments for cancer, diagnosing cancers early is a cost saving measure. We should see this study as a call for similar analyses of the cost effectiveness of early screening for colon, lung and cervical cancers. Evidence of costs savings with cancer screening could target the health inequities created by different cancer screening practices across Canada. The adoption of inclusive cancer screening presents a means to save money and optimize health equity, while improving cancer morbidity and mortality.”
