Tuesday, August 03, 2021

Imagining New Worlds: Revolutionary Love and Radical social Transformation in the Twenty-First Century

© Radical Philosophy Review
Online First: October 23, 2019

DOI: 10.5840/radphilrev2019102110

https://www.academia.edu/41371028/Imagining_New_Worlds_Revolutionary_Love_and_Radical_Social_Transformation_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

Matt York

Abstract:
As we witness the collapse of the neoliberal consensus and the subsequent rise of authoritarian ‘strong men’ and xenophobic nationalisms across the globe, the capitalist hegemony that was consolidated by the neoliberal project remains very much intact. IN pursuit of a sane alternative to this post-neoliberal world order this article proposes love as a key concept for political theory/philosophy and for performing a central role in the revolutionary transformation of contemporary global capitalism. Through a close reading of the works of Emma Goldman and Michael Hardt, and specifically their own pursuit of a political concept of love—I draw on, and make links with contemporary ideas of love as a political concept for radical social transformation in the twenty-first century. I argue that new love-based political subjectivities, practices, and group formations offer exciting opportunities for a reimagining of the frame within which an alter-globalization can occur, and link theory to praxis by introducing an ongoing Collective Visioning project which illuminates a new post-capitalist, post-patriarchal,

post-colonial, and post-anthropocentric synergetic politics grounded in revolutionary love. Revolution is love if it wants to be worthy of its name.

—Srećko Horvat,
The Radicality of Love

Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age

Edited by
Eran Fisher
Open University of Israel
Christian Fuchs
University of Westminster, UK

August 23, 2015

https://www.academia.edu/12978869/BOOK_Reconsidering_value_and_labour_in_the_digital_age

Part I Foundations

1 Introduction: Value and Labour in the Digital Age 3

Christian Fuchs and Eran Fisher

2 The Digital Labour Theory of Value and Karl Marx in the Age of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Weibo 26

Christian Fuchs

3 The Hands and Brains of Digital Culture: Arguments for an Inclusive Approach to Cultural Labour 42

Marisol Sandoval

Part II Labour and Class

4 A Contribution to a Critique of the Concept Playbour 63

Arwid Lund

5 Marx in Chinese Online Space: Some Thoughts on theLabour Problem in Chinese Internet Industries 80

Bingqing Xia

Part III The Labour of Internet Users

6 The Exploitation of Audience Labour: A Missing Perspective on Communication and Capital in the Digital Era 99

Brice Nixon

7 Audience Labour on Social Media: Learning from Sponsored Stories 11

8 Advertising on Social Media: The Reality behind theIdeology of “Free Access”: The Case of Chinese SocialMedia Platforms 133

Yuqi Na

Part IV Rent and the Commons

9 Mapping Approaches to User Participation and DigitalLabour: A Critical Perspective 153

Thomas Allmer, Sebastian Sevignani, and Jernej Amon Prodnik

10 Is the Concept of Rent Relevant to a Discussion of Surplus-Value in the Digital World? 172

Olivier Frayssé

11 The Demise of the Marxian Law of Value? A Critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri 188

Jakob Rigi

Part V Productivity in Reproduction

12 Devaluing Binaries: Marxist Feminism and the Value of Consumer Labour 207

Kylie Jarrett

13 The Concept of Subsumption of Labour to Capital:Towards the Life Subsumption in Bio-Cognitive Capitalism 224

Andrea Fumagalli

14 Form-Giving Fire: Creative Industries as Marx’s “Work of Combustion” and the Distinction between Productive andUnproductive Labour 246

Frederick H. Pitts

Index 260

Are women climate scientists judged for speaking out?

Not so much, research suggests

by George Adamson, The Conversation

Many scientists are likely to be invited for media appearances in the run up to COP26, the international negotiations on global heating that will take place in Glasgow in November 2021. Journalists will ask climate scientists to help place the talks in context and to discuss the value of particular options for reducing emissions, or to explain how climate change may have contributed to particular weather events. Given the exposure these opportunities afford, it's no surprise that some climate scientists take the chance to lend their support to particular measures.

While there is some debate over how effective it is for scientists to act as advocates, many consider it a moral obligation to discuss possible solutions to climate change, even if it goes beyond their direct expertise. Still, lots of scientists who are convinced of the importance of advocacy often refrain from it, fearing the harm it could cause their professional reputation.

In a new study, published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, myself and fellow researcher Lauren Armstrong were the first to examine how climate scientists are perceived by other scientists when speaking in favor of particular policies in the media. What we found suggests women scientists may have less to fear from their peers than they might think.

Advocacy involves making subjective judgements about how the world should be. That subjectivity can be accentuated by dramatic, narrative-based writing when it's reported in the media. This would seem opposed to the disinterested objectivity of science.

Reputational fears can be particularly discouraging for women scientists. They face well-documented barriers in science, including lower pay, fewer citations and lower funding success. Women are more likely to be stereotyped as emotional, which some seem to consider contrary to the spirit of scientific endeavor.

Wanting to avoid being considered unscientific by peers could prevent female climate scientists from giving media statements, particularly ones in which they are urged to advocate for action. The lack of publicly visible women scientists has been linked to the lower number of women who enter the profession, and it reduces the number of female messengers on an issue that disproportionately affects women globally.

Gender bias in science

We sent environmental scientists in UK universities a fictitious media statement that ostensibly responded to the 2016 Climate Action Summit, a two-day meeting hosted by the UN and held in Washington DC. The statement reported a number of existing and projected effects of climate change and advocated for "strong policies and strong action from government."

Each statement was attributed to either Daniel, Matthew, Rebecca or Helen Thompson. Participants were asked to read the statement and rate the scientist who wrote it on 23 attributes, including those stereotypically associated with women (such as emotive and caring), men (competitive and decisive), science (objective and impartial) and the media (dramatic and biased).

Across 19 of the attributes, there was little or no evidence of a gender difference. When treating the participants as a single population of men and women, there were no significant differences between the male and female scientists for any attributes.

Male participants did rate the female scientists as significantly more dramatic and biased than their female counterparts, however. This trend is in line with previous studies. For example, research in management science has found that female leaders are typically perceived by their male colleagues as more dramatic, and more prone to making judgements based on their emotions.

But the analysis didn't reveal whether male scientists were rating their female peers as more dramatic and biased than their male peers, or if female scientists were giving higher ratings to their female peers. The latter outcome would also be in line with previous studies, which suggest female scientists tend to associate female peers with the objective, rational traits commonly associated with both science and masculinity.

That means that, with the exception of some minor differences between male and female participants, there's reason to believe that advocacy in the media won't significantly harm women climate scientists' standing among their peers based on their gender. This is a significant finding for climate science communication, and for climate politics more broadly.

To more thoroughly understand the experiences of women scientists, it would be useful to learn how these perceptions translate into behavior. Nevertheless, encouraging female scientists to take on more visible roles, without fear of gender-based repercussions, could bring more women into climate science and help make people more aware of the science of climate change.

Gender pay gap means fewer female candidates on the ballot

Journal information: Public Understanding of Science

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR UCP AS POLL BY LEGER SHOWS NDP LEADING IN EDMONTON, CALGARY AND EVEN RURAL ALBERTA

ALBERTA PREMIER JASON KENNEY WAS TRYING TO SHORE UP THE UNITED CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S RURAL BASE IN STRATHMORE, EAST OF CALGARY, YESTERDAY (PHOTO: TWITTER/JASON KENNEY).

Alberta Politics
DAVID CLIMENHAGA
POSTED ON AUGUST 01, 2021,

Another poll by a respectable pollster suggests that if an Alberta provincial election were held today Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party would triumph handily over Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party.

This is starting to look like a trend.

NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Such an election won’t be held today, of course, so everyone can stop hyperventilating.

Still, if I were a member of Premier Kenney’s strategic brain trust, I would be worrying about the results of the online poll by Leger that were revealed yesterday by Postmedia’s newspapers.

Postmedia, which is not really a very respectable news organization nowadays, has a partnership with Leger to release these surveys from time to time. Given Postmedia’s often undisguised partisanship for Conservative causes, it must have just about killed its executives to publish such results. Still, to their credit, they did. Some vestigial instinct to practice traditional journalism must have gotten the better of them.

The results are pretty dreary from the UCP’s perspective – at least as long as Mr. Kenney remains at the helm. They are a different matter for Ms. Notley, of course, the Opposition leader and former premier of Alberta.

According to the pollster, 39 per cent of Albertans now support the NDP, compared to 29 per cent still clinging to the wreckage of the UCP.

More than half the 1,377 Albertans who responded to the pollster’s questions between July 22 and 26 thought the province was headed in the wrong direction. Only a quarter gave the direction the province was heading as being the right one.

The NDP led in all parts of the province, even among the UCP’s rural base. Its support was overwhelming – 45 per cent of committed voters, compared to the UCP’s 28 per cent – in the Edmonton region.

Leger Executive Vice-President, Western Canada, Ian Large (Photo: Leger).

The NDP also has the committed support of most younger voters, polls very strongly among women, and leads quite strongly among men. Only the geezers – present company excepted, of course – seem to still support the UCP.

The timing of the poll, obviously, means Leger’s questions were posed before the Kenney Government announced its effective surrender to the coronavirus and its decision to stop collecting statistics about COVID-19 that might make it look bad, or requiring anyone with symptoms of the disease to get tested or self-isolate.

Friday’s announcement could well turn out to be the moment when very large numbers of Albertans decide the direction in which their province is heading is actually now at that point of the compass commonly known as “going to hell in a handbasket.”

This, in turn, may make Leger’s poll a complementary development to Elections Alberta’s revelation at the end of last week that the NDP raised more than twice as much in contributions as the UCP did in both the second quarter and the first half of 2021.

Those spending decisions by politically alert Albertans were also made before anyone knew what their UCP Government was going to do on the COVID file.

Independent MLA Drew Barnes (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

Naturally, Postmedia’s coverage tried hard to find a silver lining for the UCP in this cloudy forecast. “NDP has wide lead on UCP, but many Albertans aren’t fully committed: poll,” said the Calgary Herald’s headline, a little wistfully.

Political columnist Don Braid quoted Leger Western Canada VP Ian Large saying “there’s lots of potentially good news for the UCP” upcoming – included in his calculus was the Trans Mountain Pipeline that’s being built thanks to the efforts of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Lorne Gunter, another right-wing Postmedia columnist (is there any other kind?) made some sound points. To wit: that committed UCP support is actually up, just not as much as committed NDP support, and that Mr. Kenney needs to shore up support with the party’s far right.

My guess is the UCP’s lunatic fringe – tempted by a smorgasbord of fringy separatist parties and infected by the Q-virus from south of the Medicine Line – will already be pretty happy with Friday’s announcement of the government’s new COVID policy.

So if that doesn’t work, there’s probably not much more Mr. Kenney can do to win them back and get them contributing again – short of welcoming back rebel MLA Drew Barnes from exile, anyway. (Wait for it — Ed.)

Meanwhile, a majority of Albertans appear to think the new COVID policy actually is lunacy. However, we’ll need to see some polling on that issue from someone to know if that is really true.

The UCP does have a long time to get its mojo back, and still could.

Mr. Kenney, though, really seems to have a talent for doing things that infuriate large groups of voters. So it wouldn’t necessarily be a good bet at this point to put money on the proposition Mr. Kenney won’t continue to mess right up to the next election in 2023, or whenever it ends up being called.

UCP Caucus press release played fast and loose with truth about MLA’s support

Alert readers will recall how a couple of weeks ago, Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn was welcomed back into the UCP Caucus after a short sojourn on the independent benches as punishment for ignoring his constituents 140-some kilometres north of the fleshpots of Edmonton.

Lesser Slave Lake UCP MLA Pat Rehn (Photo: Facebook/Pat Rehn).

Mr. Rehn, who had also been caught holidaying in Mexico as the pandemic raged over the Christmas holiday, had learned to behave himself since Premier Kenney cast him into outer political darkness, Caucus Chair Nathan Neudorf said in mid-July in a press release.

“The United Conservative Caucus was presented with letters of support – including from several municipalities and the Lesser Slave Lake Constituency Association – requesting Rehn be allowed to rejoin caucus,” Mr. Neudorf’s release said. (Emphasis added.)

Now, thanks to the reporting of South Peace News editor Chris Clegg in High Prairie, we know that claim wasn’t strictly true.

Actually, it turns out, no municipalities in the riding expressed any support for Mr. Rehn’s return, Mr. Clegg informed his readers on Wednesday.

“The Town of Slave Lake, Town of High Prairie, M.D. of Lesser Slave River, Big Lakes County and Northern Sunrise County, all deny they wrote letters of support,” Mr. Clegg reported.

There were some letters of support from individual councillors – one of whom, oddly, wrote on the letterhead of the Church of the Nazarene — but none of them acted in their role as council members.

China's Tencent limits gaming for minors after media outcry

by Zen Soo

China's biggest gaming company, Tencent Holdings, said Tuesday it will limit gaming time for minors and ban children under age 12 from making in-game purchases after a state media article called games "spiritual opium."

Tencent's pledge to curb gaming for minors came hours after the company's stock plunged as much as 11% following a critique published by the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper affiliated with China's official Xinhua News Agency.

The newspaper article named Tencent's wildly popular Honor of Kings game as one that minors were addicted to, and cited a student as saying that some played the game for eight hours a day. The online article was removed hours later.

"'Spiritual opium' has grown into an industry worth hundreds of billions," the newspaper said, adding that no industry should be allowed to develop in a manner that will "destroy a generation."

On Tuesday, Tencent said in a statement it will limit gaming time for minors to one hour a day, and two hours a day during holidays. Children under age 12 will also be prohibited from making purchases within the game, the company said.

Under Chinese law, users under age 18 can play online games for a maximum of one and a half hours a day, and three hours during holidays.

Tencent also called for the industry to control gaming time for minors and discuss the possibility of banning those younger than 12 from playing games.

It was not clear if Tencent issued the curbs in light of the article. The company did not immediately comment.

The critique of the gaming industry sparked a selloff of stocks in Chinese gaming companies including NetEase amid fears that the gaming industry could be the next to experience a clampdown.

Chinese authorities in recent months have targeted e-commerce and online education, implementing new regulations to curb anti-competitive behavior after years of rapid growth in the technology sector.

Last month, authorities banned companies that provide tutoring in core school subjects from turning a profit, wiping out billions in market value from online education companies such as TAL Education and Gaotu Techedu.

"Obviously there's great concern over policy uncertainty because this is not just about online education, there was also talk about data security and now, about mobile games," said Kenny Wen, wealth management strategist at Everbright Sun Hung Kai.

"So the future will be highly uncertain, it is difficult to give a fair valuation on these stocks and investors will take a wait-and-see approach and be relatively prudent in this sector as we don't know what will happen next."

Tencent's stock price closed down 6.11% at 446 Hong Kong dollars on Tuesday.

China gaming shares dive after 'spiritual opium' warning

Psychologist explains why spite could destroy liberal democracy

by Simon McCarthy-Jones, The Conversation

As communism imploded in 1989, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama asked if liberal democracy was "the end of history," being the form all societies were destined to take. The past decades have suggested not. Illiberal democracies and hybrid democratic-authoritarian regimes continue to emerge.

Fukuyama foresaw this possibility. He felt that citizens dissatisfied with liberty and equality could destabilize liberal democracy—restarting history as it were. One way they could do so, I realized while writing a book about spite, is if such dissatisfaction led to spiteful acts.

I therefore believe defenders of liberal democracy must understand the danger of spite.

The need for recognition

Fukuyama argued that political struggle causes history. This struggle tries to solve the problem of thymos—an ancient Greek term referring to our desire to have our worth recognized.

This desire can involve wanting to be recognized as equal to others. But it can also involve wanting to be recognized as superior to others. A stable political system needs to accommodate both desires.

Communism and fascism failed, argued Fukuyama, because they couldn't solve the problem of recognition. Communism forced people to make humiliating moral compromises with the system. Fascism offered people recognition as members of a racial or national group. Yet it failed after its militarism led to defeat in the second world war.

In contrast, Fukuyama claimed that liberal democracy could solve the problem of recognition. Granting universal human rights, acknowledging the dignity and worth of all, moved to address desires for equality. Encouraging entrepreneurship, competitive professions, electoral politics and sport created safe outlets for those wanting to be recognized as superior.

But liberty can lead to inequalities, frustrating the desire to be recognized as equal. And measures taken to reduce inequalities can impede the desire to be recognized as superior.

These frustrated urges can lead to a spiteful backlash. This could lead to decision-making that weakens a liberal democracy. It could even rip apart the delicate net of rights that holds liberal democracy together.

Counter-dominant spite

A desire for equality is found in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Whenever someone gets above themselves, the group will bring them down. Means can range from gossip to murder.

If ancient humans evolved in comparable conditions, we likely evolved "counter-dominant" tendencies. Indeed, we can see this today in games devised by economists.

In such games, the majority of people, when anonymous, will pay to destroy someone else's undeserved gains. Furthermore, nearly half of people, if anonymous, will destroy others' fairly earned gains. We even see people paying to punish others who help them, finding the esteem gained by generous people to be threatening. This is called do-gooder derogation.

Counter-dominant spite can weaken liberal democracies. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, some people in the UK voted Leave to spite elites, knowing this could damage the country's economy.

Similarly, during the 2016 US presidential election some voters supported Donald Trump to spite Hillary Clinton, knowing his election could harm the US. Regimes hostile to liberal democracy encouraged such spiteful actions in both the UK and US. Ultimately, counter dominance achieved by spitefully pulling others down risks destroying property rights in a communistic race to the bottom.

Dominant spite

The desire to be superior to others, regulated by hunter-gatherer societies, broke loose about some 10,000 years ago, when agriculture started. People then lived in larger groups, with more personal resources. Dominance-seeking, also part of our evolved nature, could no longer be easily constrained.

The desire to be seen as better can be socially productive and motivating. Yet it can also lead to what is known as dominant spite. This can involve accepting a loss to retain an advantage over another. For example, many of us would rather earn less yet be ahead of our neighbor than earn more and be behind them. Similarly, around 10% of people will accept less if it maximizes how far ahead they are of others. In short, dominant spite reflects a desire to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven.

Dominant spite is also seen in some people's need for chaos. Researchers have found that around 10%-20% of people endorse statements such as that society should be burned to the ground. This may represent frustrated status seekers who think they could ultimately thrive in the ruins.

Liberty, equality, democracy?

To prevent a spiteful descent into hell, we need to understand what triggers spite. We know that spite increases as inequality and competition rise. Do-gooder derogation is greater in societies where the rule of law and co-operative norms—how acceptable people find tax evasion or fare dodging—are weaker.

An economically growing liberal democracy, seen as lawful and fair, may be the most effective way to address the problem of recognition. Yet this society must still deal with some members believing all inequalities are the result of oppression, while others think any brake on inequality is immoral. Such feelings still leave the door ajar for destructive acts of spite.

Yet, although spite can threaten liberal democracy, it may also save it. When people violate values we find sacred, the activity in the part our brains that deals with cost-benefit analyses is dampened down. This encourages us to act regardless of what harm may come to us, allowing us to feel spite for the other.

At the end of history, Fukuyama argued, people would no longer risk their lives for causes once deemed sacred. But if no-one felt liberal democracy was sacred, who would risk themselves to defend it?

To defend liberal democracy, it must be held sacred. This is what motivates its defenders to "go on to the end… whatever the cost may be," as Winston Churchill once put it. Spite may pull liberal democracy apart, but it may also be the sublime madness that saves it from tyranny.Democracy in decline for one-third of the world

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Air pollution exposure is shifting from outdoor to indoor – here's why

by Nicola Carslaw, David Carslaw, The Conversation

You may have seen the before-and-after-lockdown photos of major cities that appear to show dramatic changes in air quality. In one, the India Gate war memorial in New Delhi is barely visible amid the smog. Then, during lockdown, it's clearly visible in its red Bharatpur stone grandness.

Getting vehicles off the road may do wonders for smog, but there's more to air pollution than that. The shift away from vehicles powered by fossil fuels and the improvement of outdoor air quality in urban areas, combined with changes to buildings and lifestyles, means that indoor air pollution will become much more important in the future. And there aren't many easy answers about how much of a risk this will create—or how to address it.

Vehicles have been a dominant source of air pollutants for decades. But the century-long dominance of petroleum-based fuels is drawing to an end with the increasingly rapid rollout of electric vehicles. A consequence of this will be a fall in concentrations of highly reactive gases called nitrogen oxides, which actually neutralize another pollutant from industrial sources, ozone. So fewer petrol and diesel-fuelled cars, coupled with lower emissions from those that remain, could actually result in higher ozone concentrations in urban areas.

Unlike way up in the stratosphere where ozone plays an important role in protecting us from harmful ultraviolet radiation, at the surface, it can act as a respiratory pollutant. This property makes life difficult for those with respiratory illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis.

But we are not just exposed to ozone outdoors, it can also move into buildings through windows, doors and cracks in buildings. So it follows that if ozone concentrations increase outdoors, they will also increase indoors. Indeed, computer models predicted that during lockdown, indoor ozone concentrations would increase by 50%.

Once indoors, ozone reacts with the many chemicals that are emitted from common indoor activities, such as cleaning, to form new air pollutants, some of which are harmful to our health.

However, indoor ozone is not the only problem. There are many sources of air pollution indoors. When we cook, particularly with natural gas, and when frying meat at high temperatures, we produce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Cleaning can produce fragrance compounds (called volatile organic compounds) as well as particulate matter. Burning candles can also produce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, and also volatile organic compounds if scented.

Some of these compounds are emitted directly and some of them can further react—such as with ozone—to form new air pollutants. Consequently, indoor air quality depends largely on indoor activities and how well-ventilated a building is.

Over the last 50 years or so, buildings have become more airtight with increased energy efficiency measures—a trend that is likely to continue. Over the same period, people in many countries have been spending an increasing amount of time indoors—in homes, commuting or at work. Children in the UK were recently estimated to be spending only just over an hour outdoors each day. As a result, most of our exposure to air pollution happens indoors, even if the pollutants are formed outdoors.

Yet while ventilation will dilute emissions from indoor sources, it will also allow more ozone indoors that could initiate chemical reactions. It is clearly a complex picture.

Air pollution exposure is complex and dynamic

Altering sources of air pollution may reduce the concentration of some pollutants, but could increase those of other pollutants such as ozone. We are exposed to air pollution outdoors and indoors and to mixtures of different air pollutants in each. Even on the same street in identical houses, exposure is likely to differ in the individual houses because of the different behavior within.

The main health effects associated with air pollutants are either from long-term exposure, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer, or arise from short-term exposure, such as damaging the lungs or exacerbating asthma. Although we understand the health effects of some air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter reasonably well, for many airborne pollutants, there is little or no information on how they affect our health.

This absence of information is particularly acute for indoors, where research lags that of outdoor air quality significantly. For instance, indoor air particulate matter is formed or emitted during cooking, and it would be useful to know whether the toxicity of these particles is greater or less than common sources outdoors, such as motor vehicles.

All this means improving outdoor air quality will not necessarily reduce our overall exposure to air pollution. An important future step is to get a better understanding of our total exposure to air pollution, particularly that indoors, and its effects on our health.Study examines indoor exposure to air pollution

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Hey, do you have a second?’— The upside of workplace interruptions

Research shows these disturbances can create a sense of belonging

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

If you work in an office environment, it’s a common occurrence: You’re right in the middle of a project and a co-worker stops by to ask for help with a task or to share a photo of their new puppy.

When this happens, don’t sigh at being distracted. A new study finds that these interruptions are beneficial to a sense of belonging and can counterbalance negatives such as lost productivity.

According to the study, which predominantly took place at the University of Cincinnati and soon will appear in the print edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology, while there were downsides to interruptions at work, like raising levels of stress and lowering people’s energy, there was also an upside: Employees felt more like they “belonged” and that eventually led to higher job satisfaction.

“If the past year of social distancing and isolation has shown us anything, it is that humans are social beings who have an inherent need for interacting with others,” says the study’s lead author Harshad Puranik, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Managerial Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the study, the team surveyed 111 full-time employees twice a day for three weeks. They asked participants about their experience at work (since the beginning of the day for lunchtime surveys and since lunch for the end of workday surveys), including work interruptions, how mentally drained they felt, their sense of belonging and overall job satisfaction. The researchers found that while work interruptions can take a toll on interrupted employees' mental resources, thereby reducing job satisfaction, social interaction with an interrupter can also help boost employees' level of belonging, which was associated with increased job satisfaction.

What previous research has not considered, Puranik says, is that apart from their task-based aspect, work interruptions by others also involve a social component — the social interaction with the interrupter. “Our study revealed that by providing this avenue for social interaction with one's colleagues, work interruptions led to a greater sense of belonging. This sense of belonging, in turn, led to higher job satisfaction.”

The bulk of the study was conducted as part of Puranik’s UC doctoral thesis, with two former UC faculty members at UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business: Joel Koopman, now at Texas A&M University, and Heather C. Vough, now with George Mason University.

“We find that interruptions can actually benefit individuals from an interpersonal perspective — people feel like they belong when others come and talk to them or ask them questions, even while being distracted from their tasks,” says Vough.

What was surprising, Vough says, is that “the sense of belongingness mitigated the negative effect of interruptions on job satisfaction. Thus, interruptions at work may have gotten a bad rap due to a failure to consider their human element.”

Since management historically has focused on ways to eliminate work interruptions, the study suggests alternatives to address interruptions, such as allowing employees more leeway in choosing when and where they work from and how they schedule their work.

JOURNAL

Journal of Applied Psychology

DOI

10.1037/apl0000875

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Excuse Me, Do You Have a Minute? An Exploration of the Dark- and Bright-Side Effects of Daily Work Interruptions for Employee Well-being

Mitacs provides $5M for wearable tech development at SFU

Business Announcement

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

A new partnership between Simon Fraser University’s Personalized Lightweight Apparel Network (PLANet) and Mitacs, a not-for profit organization dedicated to innovation, will accelerate the development of new Canadian wearables and gear over the next five years.

The agreement provides $5.1 million in funding for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to work with the industry to develop new technologies that will benefit societal health and wellbeing.

PLANet is dedicated to improving Canadians’ lives by creating intelligent wearables and gear. The network combines BC’s strengths in materials science, biomedical physiology and kinesiology, engineering, interactive arts and technology, and innovative commercialization with Metro Vancouver’s industry leaders in wearables and gear products.

Professor Neil Branda, SFU Innovates director of technology readiness and prototyping and 4D LABS executive director, says, “Through this partnership we will deliver new smarter, personalized apparel and gear to better our lives, and change the ‘tech’ in tech apparel from ‘technical’ to ‘technology.’ By combining new textiles, embedded sensors and actuators, and machine learning our advanced wearable systems will improve health and wellbeing.”

Eric Bosco, chief business development and partnerships officer at Mitacs, says, “Mitacs is pleased to partner with SFU and the PLANet to facilitate the development of the next generation of wearable gear and apparel. Mitacs accelerates innovation by connecting researchers to industrial partners in important areas such as this. This agreement will play a key role in making Metro Vancouver and Canada a global leader in wearable technology.”

Research will advance wearable technology innovation

Branda says the new technologies will benefit a wide range of users, from first responders and medical staff to recreational and professional athletes, as well as those in military services. “When we think of wearable technology perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is fitness trackers and smart watches, but the technology has the potential to provide much more than just feedback to the user,” he says.

Developing smart helmets with the aim of preventing injuries or diagnosing impacts, including the onset of concussions, is just one potential application.

Others include designing smart fabrics that respond to environmental conditions, which could benefit athletes as well as others whose lives or livelihoods are impacted by weather conditions, by measuring temperature, humidity and moisture loss, then adjusting to become more breathable for the wearer.

Such technology can also provide biomarkers of stress, helping to detect and prevent potential injuries while keeping individuals’ wellbeing top of mind.

An overactive sweet tooth may spell trouble for our cellular powerplants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VAN ANDEL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

GRANDRAPIDS, Mich. (August 3, 2021) — The average American eats roughly 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day — more than three times the recommended amount for women and more than double the recommended amount for men.

Although this overconsumption is known to contribute to Type 2 diabetes and other disorders, the exact ways in which eating too much sugar sets the stage for metabolic diseases on a cellular level has been less clear.

Now, a team led by Van Andel Institute scientists has found that surplus sugar may cause our cellular powerplants — called mitochondria— to become less efficient, reducing their energy ouput.

The findings, published today in Cell Reports, highlight the cellular implications of excessive sugar consumption and provide an important new model to study the initial metabolic events that may contribute to diabetes development.

“The body needs sugar, or glucose, to survive, but, as the saying goes: ‘All good things in moderation,’” said Ning Wu, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Van Andel Institute and corresponding author of the study. “We found that too much glucose in cells, which is directly linked to the amount of sugar consumed in one’s diet, affects lipid composition throughout the body, which in turn affects the integrity of mitochondria. The overall effect is a loss of optimal function.”

Using their new model, Wu and her colleagues demonstrated that excess glucose reduces the concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the mitochondrial membrane and makes mitochondria less efficient. PUFAs are vital players in supporting mitochondrial function and mediating a host of other biological processes such as inflammation, blood pressure and cellular communication.

Instead, excess glucose is synthesized into a different form of fatty acid that isn’t as efficient or as flexible as PUFAs. This upends the lipid composition of the membrane and puts stress on the mitochondria, damaging them and impacting their performance.

Wu and her colleagues were able to reverse this detrimental effect by feeding their mouse models a low-sugar ketogenic diet, which suggests that reducing glucose and restoring normal membrane lipid composition supports healthy mitochondrial integrity and function. They also found that consuming excess carbohydrates reduces the beneficial effect of PUFA supplements.

“Although we may not always notice the difference in mitochondrial performance right away, our bodies do,” Wu explained. “If the lipid balance is thrown off for long enough, we may begin to feel subtle changes, such as tiring more quickly. While our study does not offer medical recommendations, it does illuminate the early stages of metabolic disease and provides insights that may shape future prevention and therapeutic efforts.”

Other authors include Althea N. Waldhart, Brejnev Muhire, Ph.D., Ben Johnson, Ph.D., Dean Pettinga, Zachary B. Madaj, M.S., Emily Wolfrum, MPH, Vanessa Wegert, and J. Andrew Pospisilik, Ph.D., of VAI; and Xianlin Han, Ph.D., of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies and the Department of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.

Research reported in this publication was supported by Van Andel Institute; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R01GM120129 (Wu); and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award no. RF1AH061872 (Han). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Van Andel Institute (VAI) is committed to improving the health and enhancing the lives of current and future generations through cutting edge biomedical research and innovative educational offerings. Established in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1996 by the Van Andel family, VAI is now home to more than 400 scientists, educators and support staff, who work with a growing number of national and international collaborators to foster discovery. The Institute’s scientists study the origins of cancer, Parkinson’s and other diseases and translate their findings into breakthrough prevention and treatment strategies. Our educators develop inquiry-based approaches for K-12 education to help students and teachers prepare the next generation of problem-solvers, while our Graduate School offers a rigorous, research-intensive Ph.D. program in molecular and cell biology. Learn more at vai.org.

JOURNAL

Cell Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109488

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Excess dietary carbohydrate affects mitochondrial integrity as observed in brown adipose tissue

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Aug-2021