Tech

A new study co-authored by the UBC Sauder School of Business has found that when senior managers mistreat workers, middle managers often attempt to quietly smooth things over.

Robin Hood was known for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor -- but while he may have lived in Sherwood Forest centuries ago, he would have fit right in as a middle manager in today's business world.

Studies have shown that when employees are mistreated by senior leaders, employees can often get back at them by doing things like gossiping, stealing office supplies or calling in sick when they're well. But according to new research from UBC Sauder, middle managers also get in on the act, and attempt to address workplace injustices by secretly helping out their subordinates when they can.

In fact, managers with an especially strong moral code can consider it their duty to right the wrongs they see, and to compensate victims in hidden ways -- out of view of the top brass.

For the paper, titled When Managers Become Robin Hoods: A Mixed Method Investigation, the research team from UBC Sauder, Emlyon, University of Colorado and the University of Toulouse first interviewed 35 middle managers -- 20 men and 15 women -- at a European publishing company that employs roughly 550 workers. There, they confirmed that managers knowingly engaged in "robin hoodism."

In several follow-up studies involving hundreds of participants from countries around the world, the researchers also examined whether co-workers were aware the robin hoodism was happening, when it was most likely to happen, and what drove managers to potentially risk their own jobs to help those beneath them.

What they found was that robin hoodism is not at all unusual, and amounts to a kind of invisible wage system, where middle managers compensate victims under the table in a variety of ways -- from extra vacation time to higher travel allowances to equipment they're allowed to take home -- after they have experienced a workplace injustice.

The type of slight also plays a part: managers were more likely to dole out extra favours when the worker was treated poorly on an interpersonal level as opposed to a bureaucratic one.

"Managers minded if a salary wasn't the highest, or if bureaucratic procedures were a problem," says UBC Sauder Professor and study co-author Daniel Skarlicki (he/him/his).

"But when a victim got cheated out of an outcome like a promotion, or was mistreated interpersonally or insulted, that especially seemed to really trigger managers into action to do something about it. That's when the Robin Hoods really get inspired."

In one example, a woman was given time off to attend her daughter's graduation, but then a senior manager revoked that approval. The woman's immediate manager was sympathetic and took the whole crew out for dinner to help make amends.

But not all managers dispensed their robin hoodism equally. The researchers tested the moral identity -- that is, the degree to which people see themselves as moral -- of 187 managers in an MBA program in France. They found that managers who scored higher on the moral identity scale were more likely to engage in robin hoodism than those who scored lower.

"That gave us additional data that managers' moral concerns really do underlie robin hoodism," says Professor Skarlicki, who has done many studies involving justice in the workplace. "It's an interesting paradox, because some people might view what Robin Hood did as unethical -- and yet managers who do it actually see themselves as doing the right thing."

Middle managers are in an especially tricky position because they can't punish the transgressor -- their boss -- but they want to keep the workers beneath them feel they are treated fairly. At the same time, because senior executives are making financial decisions, and don't account for their managers doling out extra gifts and bonuses, that robin hoodism could put a serious dent in their companies' bottom lines. Still, says Professor Skarlicki, executives who discover Robin Hoods in their midst in some cases might be wise to turn a blind eye.

"When a senior leader has done something that's offensive or mistreats an employee, it's really important that the manager has a bit of wiggle room to be able to fix it. It's really a way of absorbing some of the mistreatment that can happen, even inadvertently," says Professor Skarlicki. But those same leaders probably shouldn't advertise that they're allowing it, he adds.

"You don't want to say, 'Hey, managers, you can go out and give everybody extra bonuses,' because then you don't really have a lot of control over spending and other things."

Professor Skarlicki says he suspected that robin hoodism was happening in workplaces, but was surprised by the pervasiveness of the practice.

"I was surprised that it was so common, and so commonly known that managers do it," he says, adding a final thought for senior leaders. "If you're treating people unfairly, your organization is not running as smoothly as it could, because victims are getting even, and managers are taking it upon themselves to make things right."

When there is a gas leak in a large building or at an industrial site, human firefighters currently need to go in with gas sensing instruments. Finding the gas leak may take considerable time, while they are risking their lives. Researchers from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have now developed the first swarm of tiny - and hence very safe - drones that can autonomously detect and localize gas sources in cluttered indoor environments.

The main challenge the researchers needed to solve was to design the Artificial Intelligence for this complex task that would fit in the tight computational and memory constraints of the tiny drones. They solved this challenge by means of bio-inspired navigation and search strategies. The scientific article has now been made public on the ArXiv article server, and it will be presented at the renowned IROS robotics conference later this year. The work forms an important step in the intelligence of small robots and will allow finding gas leaks more efficiently and without the risk of human lives in real-world environments.

Autonomous gas source localization

Autonomous gas source localization is a complex task. For one, artificial gas sensors are currently less capable than animal noses in detecting small amounts of gas and staying sensitive to quick changes in gas concentration. Moreover, the environment in which the gas spreads can be complex. Consequently, much of the research in this area has focused on single robots that search for a gas source in rather small, obstacle-free environments in which the source is easier to find.

Swarms of tiny drones

"We are convinced that swarms of tiny drones are a promising avenue for autonomous gas source localization", says Guido de Croon, Full Professor at the Micro Air Vehicle laboratory of TU Delft. "The drones' tiny size makes them very safe to any humans and property still in the building, while their flying capability will allow them to eventually search for the source in three dimensions. Moreover, their small size allows them to fly in narrow indoor areas. Finally, having a swarm of these drones allows them to localize a gas source quicker, while escaping local maxima of gas concentration in order to find the true source."

However, these properties also make it very hard to instill the drones with the necessary artificial intelligence for autonomous gas source localization. The onboard sensing and processing is extremely limited, excluding the type of AI algorithms that make self-driving cars autonomous. Moreover, operating in a swarm brings its own challenges, since the drones need to be aware of each other for collision avoidance and collaboration.

Bio-inspired Artificial Intelligence

"Actually, in nature there are ample examples of successful navigation and odor source localization within strict resource constraints.", says Bart Duisterhof, who performed the research for obtaining his MSc thesis at TU Delft. "Just think of how fruitflies with their tiny brains of ~100,000 neurons infallibly locate the bananas in your kitchen in the summer. They do this by elegantly combining simple behaviors such as flying upwind or orthogonally to the wind depending on whether they sense the odor. Although we could not directly copy these behaviors due to the absence of airflow sensors on our robots, we have instilled our robots with similarly simple behaviors to tackle the task."

In particular, the tiny drones implement a new "bug" algorithm for their navigation, termed "Sniffy Bug". As long as no drone has sensed any gas, the drones spread out as much as possible over the environment, while avoiding obstacles and each other. If one of the drones senses gas at its location, it communicates this to the others. From that point on, the drones will collaborate with each other to find the gas source as soon as possible. Specifically, the swarm then performs a search for maximal gas concentration with an algorithm termed "particle swarm optimization" (PSO), with each drone being a "particle". This algorithm was originally modelled after the social behavior and motion of bird flocks. It has each drone moving based on its own perceived highest gas concentration location, the swarm's highest location, and an inertia in its current moving direction. As a search strategy, PSO has the advantage that it only requires measuring the gas concentration, and not the gas concentration gradient or wind direction. Furthermore, it allows the swarm to ignore local maxima that may occur in complex environments.

The path to real-world applications

"This research shows that swarms of tiny drones can perform very complex tasks.", adds Guido, "We hope that this work forms an inspiration for other robotics researchers to rethink the type of AI that is necessary for autonomous flight."

The development of this type of technology to a fully functioning product still requires further work. For instance, the current work does not yet tackle moving in three dimensions to locate gas sources at a height. Furthermore, the robustness of navigation should also be improved before deploying the drones in a real emergency scenario.

However, the current work is very promising. The developed algorithms are not only useful for detecting gas leaks in buildings, but also for scientific missions such as detecting methane on Mars or economical use such as the early detection of diseases or pests in greenhouses.

Super-thin carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes may not be best for separating industrially important chemical mixtures. However, ensuring the CMS film thickness is just right could enable more energy-efficient purification of chemical products, KAUST researchers have shown.

CMS membranes, as their name suggests, can purify mixtures of liquids or gases by permitting only certain molecules to pass through their subnanometer-sized pores. Currently, the chemical industry mainly uses heat-based processes such as distillation to separate product mixtures, but these processes consume about 10 percent of global energy output. "This situation is highly unsustainable," says Wojciech Ogieglo, a research scientist at KAUST. "We believe that a good portion of these energy-intensive separations could be replaced by much more environmentally friendly membrane separations."

CMS membranes are created by depositing a layer of carbon-rich polymers on to a suitable support, then applying heat to convert the polymer into a microporous CMS film. "CMS materials display by far the best performance for a wide variety of highly energy-intensive membrane-based gas separation applications," says group leader Ingo Pinnau.

"These materials are also particularly chemically robust," notes Ogieglo. "They are promising for situations such as plastics production or greenhouse gas capture because they perform reliably even in very harsh chemical environments and at high temperatures," he says.

One aspect of CMS membrane research is to optimize the CMS film thickness to minimize the energy required to separate a chemical mixture. "Intuitively, one could think that the thinner the membrane, the better," Ogieglo says. A thinner CMS layer would be expected to pose the least transport resistance to molecules passing through its pores. However, the team found that when they created sub-50 nanometer CMS films, the CMS layer was very compact with low microporosity. "Such extremely thin films turn out to pose much more transport resistance than expected," Ogieglo says. Thicker 300 nanometer CMS films had significantly higher microporosity, the team showed.

"We believe that there must be a sweet spot in the thickness range -- not too thin, not too thick -- where the membrane performance is optimal," Ogieglo says. "We are currently trying to find out where this sweet spot lies for different types of membrane materials."

"The results will feed into the team's wider efforts to create scalable, industry-ready CMS separation membranes," Pinnau says. "We are currently scaling up the production of CMS composite membranes to test their performance and long-term stability in membrane modules," he adds.

The premise of heated tobacco (HT) is simple: tobacco leaf is heated, never burnt, so avoiding many harmful by-products of combustion for the user. The exhaled 'mist' is correctly termed an aerosol, which is almost invisible and far less dense and pungent than the exhaled smoke from combustible cigarettes.

Another advantage of HT is that there are no 'side-stream' emissions to impact air quality (or disturb bystanders - these emissions form part of the ambient smoke that's often known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or 'second-hand' smoke), because unlike a combustible cigarette there is no constantly burning tip. Our previous research suggests that, unlike cigarettes, using our Pulze heated tobacco device causes no negative impact on indoor air quality (IAQ).

As the HT category grows in popularity as a potentially less harmful alternative to combustible cigarettes amongst adult smokers, there will likely be a desire for more information about how exhaled HT aerosol behaves around both users and bystanders. For these reasons we commissioned an independent research study undertaken by leading EU air quality researchers at the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, to find out how our HT device Pulze's exhaled aerosol behaves in terms of spatial and temporal dynamics compared to combustible cigarette smoke.

The results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Aerosol and Air Quality Research, demonstrate:

Particles exhaled following use of the HT product are droplets comprised of 75-85% water and evaporate quickly, disappearing 10 seconds after a puff

By contrast, particles from conventional cigarettes are mainly non- or semi-volatile particles that are much more stable than those from HT: the removal of these particles takes much longer (30-45 minutes)

The average particle size was 93nm for HT and 165-200nm for CC

Distance between HT users and bystanders was shown to be the most significant factor affecting aerosol dynamics that influences short-term bystander exposure

While ventilation intensity and relative humidity didn't have statistically significant effects on aerosol particle behaviour, longer-term exposure should take into consideration both ventilation intensity and distance between HT users and bystanders

The aerosols exhaled following use of Pulze's 'standard' (345°C) and 'eco' (315°C) modes were both tested, but no significant difference in aerosol concentration and particle size distribution was recorded

Overall, the results demonstrate the exhaled aerosol produced using Pulze is very different in terms of chemical composition and spatial and temporal dynamics, and does not impact IAQ in the same way as cigarette smoke. This further validates the air quality and broader tobacco harm reduction credentials of the HT category compared to combustible cigarette smoke.

Testing, testing...

How was this research conducted? Study lead Professor Dainius Martuzevicius from the Department of Environmental Technology, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, explains:

"To measure particle dynamics in controlled conditions, an indoor test chamber representing a standard room was used (see diagram), with 13m2 of floor area and a total volume of 35.8m3. A dummy bystander with a sampling inlet to replicate breathing was used to record the air and particle number concentration (PNC) and particle size distribution (PSD). These were measured by a Fast Mobility Particle Sizer (FMPS) spectrometer. Four-way mixing ventilation was chosen for this study because it is commonly used in residential buildings."

To conduct the experiments, either a Pulze HT device with accompanying tobacco consumable iD stick or combustible cigarettes were used by volunteers standing 0.5, 1m or 2m from the dummy bystander, with a total of 108 runs made to collate data.

The results showed that, as expected, the further the bystander was from the active user, the lower the detected PNC. If the user is closer to the bystander, then the exhaled aerosol does not have sufficient time to disperse into the surrounding air. As the distance increases, the exhaled aerosol can still be registered, but at much lower levels.

At 0.5m, the HT aerosol number concentration during puffs reached 1.6 million particles per cm3, compared to 147 million per cm3 for CC. After five seconds the puff concentration dropped to 1000-10,000 particles per cm3, which is comparable to the particle number concentrations in many urban environments.

At 1m and 2m the effect of a puff is significantly diminished because the aerosol is diluted and dispersed as it moves around the room. At 2m, only a very directional puff towards the bystander elevates the aerosol concentration.

HT and vaping have no negative impact on IAQ as measured using national and international IAQ guidelines. This is in contrast to combustible cigarettes, use of waterpipes, as well as many other indoor pollution sources, including incense burning and mosquito coils (see Table 2).

Dynamic changes

Science shows that HT indoor aerosol particle dynamics are fundamentally different from cigarette smoke. The HT exhaled aerosol is mostly composed of water droplets, and as such they do not linger as long in the air, and so do not exceed IAQ standards and guidelines, especially when compared to cigarette smoke.

This is positive news, and confirms findings by other researchers that have shown toxicant levels in exhaled HT aerosol are significantly lower than in cigarettes, with levels of some exhaled compounds indistinguishable from normal background levels, if detectable at all.

Overall, our scientific substantiation to date indicates that indoor Pulze use is unlikely to present an indoor air quality issue or risk to bystanders, especially compared to existing background levels of toxicants, indoor air quality standards and pollutants in urban areas.

"These results further confirm that use of HT products should be permitted in indoor spaces, but users should be courteous to those around them," adds Dr Grant O'Connell, Head of Tobacco Harm Reduction Science at Imperial Brands. "The findings also add to the body of evidence that heated tobacco products have an important part to play in making a meaningful contribution to tobacco harm reduction."

Researchers have found evidence for an anomalous phase of matter that was predicted to exist in the 1960s. Harnessing its properties could pave the way to new technologies able to share information without energy losses. These results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

While investigating a quantum material, the researchers from the University of Cambridge who led the study observed the presence of unexpectedly fast waves of energy rippling through the material when they exposed it to short and intense laser pulses. They were able to make these observations by using a microscopic speed camera that can track small and very fast movement on a scale that is challenging with many other techniques. This technique probes the material with two light pulses: the first one disturbs it and creates waves - or oscillations - propagating outward in concentric circles, in the same way as dropping a rock into a pond; the second light pulse takes a snapshot of these waves at various times. Put together, these images allowed them to look at how these waves behave, and to understand their 'speed limit.'

"At room temperature, these waves move at a hundredth of the speed of light, much faster than we would expect in a normal material. But when we go to higher temperatures, it is as if the pond has frozen," explained first author Hope Bretscher, who carried out this research at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. "We don't see these waves moving away from the rock at all. We spent a long time searching for why such bizarre behaviour could occur."

The only explanation that seemed to fit all the experimental observations was that the material hosts, at room temperature, an "excitonic insulator" phase of matter, which while theoretically predicted, had eluded detection for decades.

"In an excitonic insulator, the observed waves of energy are supported by charge neutral particles that can move at electron-like velocities. Importantly, these particles could transport information without being hindered by the dissipation mechanisms that, in most common materials, affect charged particles like electrons," said Dr Akshay Rao from the Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research. "This property could provide a simpler route toward room-temperature, energy-saving computation than that of superconductivity."

The Cambridge team then worked with theorists around the world to develop a model about how this excitonic insulating phase exists, and why these waves behave in this way.

"Theorists predicted the existence of this anomalous phase decades ago, but the experimental challenges to see evidence of this has meant that only now we are able to apply previously developed frameworks to provide a better picture of how it behaves in a real material," commented Yuta Murakami, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who collaborated on the study.

"The dissipationless energy transfer challenges our current understanding of transport in quantum materials and opens theorists' imaginations to new ways for their future manipulation," said collaborator Denis Golež, from the Jozef Stefan Institute and University of Ljubljana.

"This work puts us a step closer toward achieving some incredibly energy-efficient applications that can harness this property, including in computers." concluded Dr Rao.

A Skoltech team has developed a model for assessing infection risks for supermarket customers. The researchers believe that their model will help formulate scientifically backed rules for safe shopping during the pandemic. The paper was published in PLOS One.

The team included professor Maxim Fedorov, who serves as Skoltech's Vice President for Artificial Intelligence and Mathematical Modeling, and a research group led by professor Nikolai Brilliantov -- the Director of the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE).

The composite model presented in the paper incorporates a social forces model that describes customer motions and interactions with other shoppers or obstacles and is known to realistically reproduce waiting lines and congestions in confined spaces, such as stairs, and customers' behavior during emergency evacuation. The approach is based on calculating several "forces" (see image), each describing a customer's tendency to maintain a comfortable speed, approach a target, avoid obstacles, etc.

Other components describe the purchasing strategy and retail space layout. Customers are known to behave differently, depending on the place they visit: a small shop, a supermarket, or a cafe. The team used customer behavior scenarios specific to supermarkets and several layouts with varying numbers of intersections and bottleneck widths. Finally, the team proposed a model of infection transmission by virus-containing aerosol droplets.

The researchers used their composite model in multivariate numerical simulations to assess infection risks depending on several factors, such as average customer density, social distancing, behavior scenarios, use of masks, and retail space geometry. It turned out that the infection rate is primarily determined by social distancing, and to a much lesser extent, by the supermarket layout or customer strategy.

Curiously enough, the team discovered that increasing customer density has only a slight positive effect on sales, so filling the store to the limit makes little sense not just epidemiologically but economically, too.

"The functional version of our model, which we have made publicly available, can be used to assess the effects of various factors on the risk of infection. For example, you can optimize a store's operations in the pandemic environment by controlling customer flow, relocating specific items, and reconfiguring the retail area. Although our selection of layouts did not reveal a noticeable effect of space configuration on infection spread, geometry may be an important factor in other cases," Alexey Tsukanov, a co-author of the paper, comments.

A new study by a Swansea University academic has announced a new mathematical formula that will help engineers assess the point at which cellular materials, which are used a wide range of applications ranging from aerospace to the construction industry, will bend and buckle.

Professor Sondipon Adhikari, of the College of Engineering has published his findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The study details a formula that can calculate the elastic instability of cellular material, in this case hexagonal lattice material, also known as the honeycomb which is commonly used in the production of lightweight structures such as energy absorbent foams, mechanical and acoustic metamaterials and next-generation stent technology.

Professor Adhikari's formula, which is a simple closed-form expression, will help engineers make quick design calculations and can also be used to benchmark future experimental and numerical studies.

Professor Adhikari said: "This paper is the result of two years of sustained research. The simple closed-form expression for critical buckling stress can be viewed as the extension of the classical Euler's critical load formula, first derived in 1757 which calculated the stress point at which a beam will suddenly bend and buckle. This new expression is a 21st century solution for engineering cellular materials that will be used in advanced engineering applications now and in the future."

Amsterdam, July 13, 2021 - Mass spectrometry has emerged as an important analytical tool for gaining a better understanding of mechanisms underlying Huntington's disease (HD), alongside the increased availability of cell and animal models of the disease. This review, published in the Journal of Huntington's Disease, brings together and recaps data from major published mass spectrometry studies undertaken in HD research over the last 20 years, identifying important changes that occur in HD. The authors encourage researchers to make greater use of these studies to accelerate the development of new treatments.

HD is a rare neurodegenerative disorder caused by the aberrant expression of mutant Huntingtin (HTT) protein containing an expanded polyglutamine tract. Mass spectrometry is a technique that has existed for over a century to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions, however, proteins in complex mixtures such as tissues were not commonly analyzed until more modern ionization methods became available.

The authors have explained mass spectrometry in terms understandable for most biologists. Although these studies have yielded copious, useful data, researchers in the HD field have been unaware of just how many such studies have been performed.

"There are several advantages of using mass spectrometry," explained Kimberly B. Kegel-Gleason, PhD, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND), Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA. "First, it is objective - scientists don't need to have a preformed idea or candidate proteins in mind, which frees the experiment of our preconceptions and allows us to identify changes that we might not have thought of. Second, recent advances in the hardware have made it easier to detect many proteins, including those at very low levels in a mixed sample. Finally, expanded gene databases provided by whole genome sequencing now allow accurate 'annotation' or identification of the proteins of interest."

HTT is now known to have a wide variety of post translational modifications (PTMs). In the early 2000s, mass spectrometry was used to identify Hap40 as part of protein complex with HTT. It was also used to investigate the difference in wild-type and HD proteomes (a proteome is the set of expressed proteins in a given type of cell, tissue, or organism). Following this study, several other investigators performed whole proteome studies in both human and mouse HD models. Many researchers have taken this a step further to investigate the HTT interactome (protein-protein interaction network) using mass spectrometry, and also examined HTT itself to identifying novel PTMs.

Notable among the studies reviewed are 15 proteome studies that sought to determine changes in expression levels (asking the question how much protein is there?) and five Interactome studies that looked at changes in how HTT interacts with other proteins (asking the question does HTT interact more or less with proteins?). These studies compared brain tissue from animal models and autopsy tissue from patients with HD compared to controls. Importantly, three studies used cerebral spinal fluid from controls and patients with HD in an effort to identify biomarkers for disease progression. They also highlight four studies that identified posttranslational modifications (molecular markers) on the Huntingtin protein.

"Top-down mass spectrometry studies on the HTT protein are producing extremely interesting information about phosphorylation status and other modifications of HTT," noted co-author Connor Seeley, BS, Laboratory of Cellular Neurobiology, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA. "Correlating these HTT proteoforms with functions should be fruitful in identifying mechanisms of pathology that can be targeted for intervention."

"To date, despite the large number of published works, there has not been a similar comprehensive review focused on results from HD mass spectrometry studies," commented Dr. Kegel-Gleason. "A substantial investment of research dollars was used to obtain these important data, yet often the greater community does not know how to interpret the findings or is unaware of how much data exist.

"We encourage researchers to use this resource of assembled studies to streamline their own research to accelerate our identification of treatments. Of special interest is validating biomarkers in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). HD researchers should continue to mine data from these compiled works to support their findings. Finally, additional studies comparing control and HD CSF are warranted to discover and develop novel biomarkers for clinical applications."

HD is a fatal genetic neurodegenerative disease that causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. An estimated 250,000 people in the United States are either diagnosed with, or at risk for, the disease. Symptoms include personality changes, mood swings and depression, forgetfulness and impaired judgment, unsteady gait, and involuntary movements (chorea). Every child of an HD parent has a 50% chance of inheriting the gene. Patients usually survive 10-20 years after diagnosis.

In particle physics, a Majorana Fermion is charge neutral and its antiparticle is just itself. In condensed matter physics, a Majorana zero mode (MZM) is a quasi-particle excitation, which appears in the surfaces or edges of topological superconductors. Unlike the ordinary particles or quasi-particles that obey boson or fermion statistics, MZM obeys non-abelian statistics, a key property that makes MZM the building block for realizing topological quantum computation. Currently major experimental efforts focus on heterostructures made of superconductors and spin-orbit coupled systems (such as semiconducting nano-wires and topological insulators), where evidences of MZMs have been found. Unambiguous detection and manipulation of MZMs in these heterostructures, however, heavily rely on the superconducting proximity effect that suffers from the complexity of the interface. Furthermore, the low operation temperature of conventional superconducting materials complicates further manipulation of MZMs.

Iron-based superconductor was discovered in 2008 by the Japanese scientist Hideo Hosono as the second class of high-Tc materials. In the past decade, intensive studies focused on their unconventional superconductivity and strong correlation effect. Recently, the discovery of topological surface states on the surfaces of iron based superconductor Fe(Te,Se) renders it a unique system integrating both high-Tc superconductivity and topology. Therefore, it provides an exciting opportunity to realize MZM at comparably high critical temperature Tc. Moreover, the monolayer Fe(Te,Se) has a maximum Tc of 40 K and good tenability with a large in-plane upper critical field.

In a study published in Beijing-based National Science Review, a research team led by Chaoxing Liu, an associate professor from Pennsylvania State University, proposed to realize MZMs in monolayer Fe(Te,Se) by applying an in-plane magnetic field and electric gating.

The researchers found that applying an in-plane magnetic field can drive monolayer Fe(Te,Se) into the higher-order topological superconducting phase, in which the MZMs can appear at the corners. Furthermore, through electric gating, MZM can also occur at the domain wall of chemical potentials at one edge and certain type of tri-junction in the two-dimensional bulk (see Figure). According to their estimation, the needed magnetic field is well below the in-plane upper critical magnetic field of monolayer Fe(Te,Se) superconductor. In addition, rotating the magnetic field may provide an efficient approach to perform the braiding operation for the corner MZMs. Therefore, their study demonstrates that monolayer Fe(Te,Se) is a promising Majorana platform with scalability and electrical tunability and within reach of contemporary experimental capability.

North Carolina State University researchers have created insecticide-free, mosquito-resistant clothing using textile materials they confirmed to be bite-proof in experiments with live mosquitoes. They developed the materials using a computational model of their own design, which describes the biting behavior of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries viruses that cause human diseases like Zika, Dengue fever and yellow fever.

Ultimately, the researchers reported in the journal Insects that they were able to prevent 100 percent of bites when a volunteer wore their clothing - a base layer undergarment and a combat shirt initially designed for the military - in a cage with 200 live, disease-free mosquitoes. Vector Textiles, an NC State startup company, has licensed the related patent rights and intends to make clothing for commercial sale in the United States.

The researchers think their computational model could be used more widely to develop clothing to reduce transmission of diseases.

"The fabric is proven to work - that's the great thing we discovered," said study co-author Andre West, associate professor of fashion and textile design at NC State and director of Zeis Textiles Extension for Economic Development. "To me, that's revolutionary. We found we can prevent the mosquito from pushing through the fabric, while others were thick enough to prevent it from reaching the skin."

To develop the computational model to design textile materials that could prevent A. aegypti bites, researchers investigated the dimensions of the head, antenna and mouth of A. aegypti, and the mechanics of how it bites. Then, they used the model to predict textile materials that would prevent bites, depending on their thickness and pore size. Researchers said they believe the materials could be effective against other mosquito species in addition to A. aegypti because of similarities in biology and biting behavior.

"There are different uses for clothing," said the study's first author Kun Luan, postdoctoral research scholar of forest biomaterials at NC State. "The idea is to have a model that will cover all possible garments that a person would ever want."

To test the accuracy of their model, the researchers tested the materials predicted to be bite-proof. In experiments with live, disease-free mosquitoes, the researchers surrounded a blood reservoir with plastic materials made according to parameters predicted by the model. They then counted how many mosquitoes became engorged with blood.

One material they initially tested was very thin - less than one millimeter thick - but had a very small pore size to prevent the mosquito from sticking its mouth parts, or proboscis, through the material. Another material had a medium pore size to prevent the mosquito from inserting its head through the textile far enough to reach the skin; and a third material had larger pores, but was sufficiently thick that the mosquito's mouth still couldn't reach the skin.

In a subsequent test, the researchers chose a series of knitted and woven fabrics that met the bite-proof parameters determined by the model, and validated they worked in experiments using both the blood reservoir and human volunteers. The researchers tested the number of bites received by volunteers when study participants inserted an arm covered by a protective sleeve into a mosquito cage. The researchers also compared the fabrics' ability to prevent bites and repel mosquitoes to fabrics treated with an insecticide.

From what they learned in early experiments, researchers developed the bite-resistant, form-fitting undergarment made with a thin material, as well as a long-sleeved shirt, which was initially envisioned as a combat shirt for the military.

When a volunteer wore the garments sitting for 10 minutes and standing for 10 minutes in a walk-in cage with 200 hungry mosquitos, the volunteer found the combat shirt was 100 percent effective at preventing bites. In the first trial testing the base layer, the volunteer received bites on the back and shoulders - seven bites for 200 mosquitoes. The researchers attributed the bites to the fabric stretching and deforming, so they doubled the material layer around the shoulders, and were ultimately able to prevent 100 percent of bites. They also tested the clothing for comfort, and to see how well it trapped heat and released moisture.

"The final garments that were produced were 100 percent bite-resistant," said Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Entomology at NC State. "Everyday clothing you wear in the summer is not bite-resistant to mosquitoes. Our work has shown that it doesn't have to be that way. Clothes that you wear every day can be made bite-resistant. Ultimately, the idea is to have a model that will cover all possible garments that person would ever want - both for the military as well as for private use."

Contractile injection systems (CISs) are widely distributed in bacteria and archaea that can form a nanomachine resembling the contractile tails of bacteriophage (T4, P2, etc.) to translocate proteins and nucleic acids . The P. asymbiotica was shown to be involved in the human infection with severe skin lesions. The PVC loci within P. asymbiotica genome produce molecular needle complexes and encode several putative effector genes. It would be a candidate P. asymbiotica weapon that participates in the attack of mammalian cells, but substantial evidences will be needed to verify this hypothesis.

In this study, researchers have characterized the PAU_RS16575 as a potent PVC effector, which is widely present in bacteria. This toxin (designated as Pdp1, Photorhabdus dNTP pyrophosphatase 1) is responsible for the cytotoxicity towards the eukaryotic cells on the basis of its dNTP pyrophosphatase activity.Meanwhile, researchers have shown that the PVC effector Pdp1, together with Pnf that has been investigated before, could be loaded and translocated directly into the mammalian macrophage through PVC complex to induce cell death.

Besides, the loading scenario of PVC effectors Pdp1 and Pnf are demonstrated by cryo-EM detection and the targeting cells of PVC are determined. The direct translocation of the effectors by PVC is also validated by in vitro experiments.

These molecular nanosyringes show potential for biotechnology application in delivering drugs or proteins into eukaryotic hosts and this work sets the foundation for further investigations of the PVC-related eCISs and their effectors.

AMHERST, Mass. - Humans have known for over two thousand years that shipworms, a worm-like mollusk, are responsible for damage to wooden boats, docks, dikes and piers. Yet new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst published in Frontiers in Microbiology reveals that we still don't know the most basic thing about them: how they eat.

"It's unbelievable," says Reuben Shipway, adjunct assistant professor in microbiology at UMass Amherst, research fellow at the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and one of the paper's authors. "The ancient Greeks wrote about them, Christopher Columbus lost his fleet due to what he called 'the havoc which the worm had wrought,' and, today, shipworms cause billions of dollars of damage a year."

Shipworms also play a key role in mangrove forest ecosystems, found throughout the world's tropical regions, and are responsible for cycling a huge amount of carbon through the web of life. "Yet," says Shipway, "we still don't know how they do what they do."

Part of the problem is that the nutritious part of wood - cellulose - is encased in a thick and extremely difficult-to-digest layer of lignin. "Imagine a really thick, unbreakable eggshell," says senior author and UMass professor of microbiology, Barry Goodell.

Certain fungi possess enzymes capable of digesting the lignin, and it has long been thought that symbiotic bacteria living in shipworms' gills also had the enzymes. "We thought that the bacteria were doing the work," says Goodell, "but we now know they are not."

Researchers are still trying to figure out what within the shipworm could be responsible for breaking down the lignin. "I combed through the entire genomes of five different species of shipworm," says Stefanos Stravoravdis, the paper's lead author and a graduate student in microbiology at UMass, "looking for specific protein groups which create the enzymes that we know are capable of digesting lignin. My search turned up nothing."

This, however, is not the end of the story, and the team will be publishing more research in the near future that will help unravel the mystery of how shipworms eat wood. "We need to understand this process" says Stravoravdis.

Compared with heterosexual smokers, menthol cigarette smoking is higher among lesbian, gay and bisexual cigarette smokers, according to a Rutgers-led study, especially among bisexual and lesbian/gay female cigarette smokers.

The study, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, examined national data from 2015 to 2019 of individuals ages 18 years and older by sex and sexual identity and found that among smokers, 54 and 50 percent of bisexual and lesbian/gay females smokers preferred menthol cigarettes, respectively, compared with 39 percent of smokers overall.

This study comes in the wake of plans by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban menthol cigarettes; a move that researchers say is necessary considering menthol's popularity among vulnerable populations, including youth smokers and Black smokers.

"There is a lot of research showing that bisexual females report disproportionately high rates of substance use, including cigarette smoking," said Ollie Ganz, lead author and instructor at the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies. "Our study confirms that this is also the case for menthol cigarettes. Given what we know about the impact of menthol on initiation, nicotine dependence and quit success, these high rates of menthol use among bisexual female smokers may be exacerbating cigarette smoking disparities."

Future studies are needed, researchers say, to inform targeted interventions to prevent menthol cigarette initiation and promote smoking cessation among lesbian, gay and bisexual smokers, as well as to examine the impact of a potential menthol ban, like the one proposed by the FDA, on this population.

Information-rich optical imaging can provide multidimensional information to enable observation and analysis of a detected target, contributing insights into mysterious and unknown worlds. With its ability to capture dynamic scenes on picosecond—and even femtosecond—timescales, ultrafast multidimensional optical imaging has important applications in the detection of the ultrafast phenomena in physics, chemistry, and biology.

While pump-probe-based ultrafast imaging can acquire high-resolution multidimensional information, it cannot adequately capture unstable or irreversible transient scenes. Fortunately, compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), based on compressed sensing and streak imaging, surpasses traditional pump-probe-based ultrafast imaging. CUP has attracted broad attention due to its high temporal resolution, high data-throughput, and single-shot acquisition. It has been successfully applied in the studies of various ultrafast phenomena, such as capturing ultrafast photons, observing optical Mach cone, and detecting optical chaotic dynamics.

For many ultrafast phenomena, the spatial volumetric distribution and spectral composition of the dynamic scene are critical to observing dynamic processes and exploring potential mechanisms. Although ultrafast optical imaging has developed rapidly and a variety of methods with spatial or spectral resolution have been proposed in recent years, so far no ultrafast imaging technique has been able to acquire temporal-spatial-spectral (x, y, z, t, and λ) five-dimensional (5D) information simultaneously with a snapshot.

As reported in Advanced Photonics, an international team led by Shian Zhang at State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy, East China Normal University, recently developed and experimentally demonstrated a spectral-volumetric (SV) CUP system that can simultaneously capture 5D information with a single snapshot measurement. The innovative SV-CUP combines time-of-flight CUP (ToF-CUP) and hyperspectral CUP (HCUP): the ToF-CUP extracts the spatial 3D information and the HCUP records the spatial-temporal-spectral 4D information. The full complement of 5D information is finally retrieved by coupling ToF-CUP and HCUP according to their time-stamped relationship.

With spatial resolutions of 0.39, 0.35, and 3 mm in x, y, and z directions, the system can reliably resolve a variety of 3D objects, as demonstrated experimentally with reference to a quantum-dot-coated 3D mannequin. The field of view is 8.8 mm x 6.3 mm x 15 mm, which can be conveniently adjusted by replacing the tube lens according to the scene. A temporal frame interval of 2 ps and spectral frame interval of 1.72 nm contribute to an impressive performance that results in 5D imaging with hyperspectral and volumetric resolution.

Combining computational imaging, compressed sensing, and image processing, SV-CUP provides a novel scheme for improved dimensionality in ultrafast optical imaging. According to Zhang, "SV-CUP promises fresh insights for research into ultrafast phenomena in physics and biochemistry."

A decade after scientists discovered that lab rats will rescue a fellow rat in distress, but not a rat they consider an outsider, new research from the University of California, Berkeley, pinpoints the brain regions that drive rats to prioritize their nearest and dearest in times of crisis. It also suggests humans may share the same neural bias.

The findings, published today, Tuesday, July 13, in the journal eLife, suggest that altruism, whether in rodents or humans, is motivated by social bonding and familiarity rather than sympathy or guilt.

"We have found that the group identity of the distressed rat dramatically influences the neural response and decision to help, revealing the biological mechanism of ingroup bias," said study senior author Daniela Kaufer, a professor of neuroscience and integrative biology at UC Berkeley.

With nativism and conflicts between religious, ethnic and racial groups on the rise globally, the results suggest that social integration, rather than segregation, may boost cooperation among humans.

"Priming a common group membership may be a more powerful driver for inducing pro-social motivation than increasing empathy," said study lead author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, an assistant professor of psychobiology at Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

Bartal launched the study in 2014 as a postdoctoral Miller fellow in Kaufer's laboratory at UC Berkeley. Bartal, Kaufer and UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner led a research team that sought to identify the brain networks activated in rats in response to empathy, and whether they are mirrored in humans. The results suggest they are.

"The finding of a similar neural network involved in empathic helping in rats, as in humans, provides new evidence that caring for others is based on a shared neurobiological mechanism across mammals," Bartal said.

Using fiber photometry, immunohistochemistry, calcium imaging and other diagnostic tools, researchers found that all the rats they studied experienced empathy in response to another rat's signs of distress.

However, to act on that empathy, the helper rat's neural reward circuitry had to be triggered, and that only occurred if the trapped rat was of the same type as the helper rat, or member of its ingroup.

"Surprisingly, we found that the network associated with empathy is activated when you see a distressed peer, whether they are in the ingroup or not," Kaufer said. "In contrast, the network associated with reward signaling was active only for ingroup members and correlated with helping behavior."

Specifically, the rats' empathy correlated with the brain's sensory and orbitofrontal regions, as well as with the anterior insula. Meanwhile, the rodents' decision to help was linked to activity in the nucleus accumbens, a reward center with neurotransmitters that include dopamine and serotonin.

For the study, more than 60 pairs of caged rats were monitored over the course of two weeks. Some of the pairs were of the same strain or genetic tribe while others were not.

In each trial, one rat would be trapped inside a transparent cylinder while the other roamed free in a larger enclosure surrounding the cylinder.

While unconstrained rats consistently signaled empathy in response to the plight of trapped rats, they only worked to free those that were part of their ingroup, in which case they would lean or butt their heads against the cage door to release the rat.

Indeed, in reviewing the results of multiple measures to understand the neural roots of that bias, the research team found that while all the rodents in the trials sensed their cage partner's distress, their brains' reward circuitry was only activated when they came to the rescue of a member of their ingroup.

Moreover, humans and other mammals share virtually the same empathy and reward regions in the brain, implying that we may have similar biases toward our ingroup when it comes to helping others, Bartal noted.

"Overall, the findings suggest that empathy alone doesn't predict helping behavior, and that's really a crucial point," she said. "So, if you want to motivate people to help others who are suffering, it may be that you have to increase their feeling of belonging and group membership, and work toward a common identity."

"Encouragingly," she added, "we find that this mechanism is very flexible and determined primarily by social experience. We will now try to understand how pro-social motivation shifts when rats become friends, and how that is reflected in their brain activity."