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Physiology

One-Two Punch – The UCSB Current

Drought is endemic to the American West along with heatwaves and intense wildfires. But scientists are only beginning to understand how the effects of multiple droughts can compound to affect forests differently than a single drought alone.

UC Santa Barbara forest ecologist Anna Trugman along with her colleagues at the University of Utah, Stanford University and the U.S. Forest Service investigated the effects of repeated, extreme droughts on various types of forests across the globe. They found that a variety of factors can increase and decrease a forests resilience to subsequent droughts. However, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, concluded that successive droughts are generally increasingly detrimental to forests, even when each drought was no more extreme than the initial one.

Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to subsequent droughts. Compounding extreme events can be really stressful on forests and trees, said Trugman, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. She compares the experience to a person battling an illness: Youll be harder hit if you get sick again while youre still recovering.

That said, the case is not quite so clear cut. Theoretically, responses to subsequent droughts could be quite varied depending on a wide range of tree-level and ecosystem-level factors, said lead author William Anderegg, an assistant professor at the University of Utah. So, while a drought may place a tree under considerable stress, it could also kill off some of its neighbors, leaving the survivors with less competition for water should arid conditions return.

Trugman and her colleagues used a variety of data sources to investigate this effect on a broad scale. Tree ring data spanning over 100 years enabled them to see how trees that survived an initial drought grew afterward. Data from the U.S. Forest Inventory and Analysis gave them access to metrics on tree mortality for more than 100,000 forest plots from 2000 through 2018. They combined these sources with satellite measurements of the water content in forest canopies.

Two clear tends emerged. We found that generally trees seem to become more vulnerable to stress after multiple droughts, especially conifers, Anderegg said.

The second finding, the researchers believe, comes down to basic physiology. Conifers and their kin have different vascular systems than broadleaf trees, or angiosperms. As a result, they may sustain more damage in an initial drought and be at a disadvantage compared to angiosperms during subsequent periods of drought stress. The tree ring data bears this out, showing that conifers that survived a drought grew much more slowly, especially if another drought settled in.

By contrast, angiosperms have much more flexible anatomy and physiology, and this seems to help them recover faster and more fully after initial droughts, Anderegg said.

Anderegg was particularly surprised by the impact repeated drought had on the Amazon Rainforest. We tend to think of these forests as not very impacted by drought and, due to their high tree diversity, able to recover quickly, he said. But our results indicate the Amazon has been hit hard by three very severe droughts in the past 15 years.

Forests are complex systems, and a variety of factors ultimately dictate how they respond to extreme events. In terms of damage you need to not only think about it at the individual level, but at the forest level as well, said Trugman. So, although they will need time to recover from an extreme drought, surviving trees will face less competition for water resources than they had before. This could leave them in a better situation if drought returns to the area.

Whats more, natural selection will drive the forest as a whole to transition toward more resilient individuals, or even to more drought tolerant species overall. Repeated droughts affect forest pests and pathogens as well, and their response to these conditions will also influence how forests behave.

Scientists are still working to untangle the conditions under which each of these factors rises to the top. This [study] provides a lot of motivation, said Trugman, but I think the next pressing step is to get at the underlying mechanisms at a physiological level and ecological level.

Researchers can use these insights to improve computer models and make more accurate forecasts about the future of forests in a changing climate. Climate change is going to bring more frequent droughts, Anderegg said, so we have to understand and be able to forecast how forests will respond to multiple droughts.

These results are especially crucial in the western U.S., he added, where we've had a number of major droughts in the past 20 years.

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One-Two Punch - The UCSB Current

Physiology

Why Is Eating at Night So Frowned upon in the Nutrition World? – The Great Courses Daily News

ByMichael Ormsbee, PhD,Florida State UniversityEdited by Kate Findley and proofread byAngelaShoemaker, The Great Courses DailyResearch studies focusing on whether eating before bed causes weight gain have shown that quantity and quality of consumed food are the determining factors. Photo By Photographee.eu / ShutterstockNighttime Eating Enigmas

If youre like most people, then you get hungry again before you go to bed at night. For a long time, it was believed that eating late at night before going to sleep was bad for your health and would automatically make you gain body fat.

However, we need to consider several things when the topic of nighttime eating is brought up. According to Professor Ormsbee, you should ask yourself where the recommendations are coming from and what the scientific evidence is.

Additionally, how is nighttime eating defined? Does this mean you should be monitoring what time you eat dinner? How does the nighttime meal size and composition influence your health?

Nighttime feeding has been a major research focus in my lab at Florida State University, Professor Ormsbee said. The original premise for starting this line of research stemmed from my glory days as a collegiate ice hockey player. I remember reading about the need to stop eating late at night to avoid gaining fat or feeling lousy.

Various media experts began to speak up about it, emphasizing that if you want to have a great body composition, you should avoid eating late at nightafter dinnerat all costs.

The trouble was that I always ate before going to bed, Professor Ormsbee said. I thought it would be good to help my body recover from practice and workouts so that I could become a better player. And just about everybody I knew who had low body fat and good muscle mass would not only eat at all times of the day, but would purposefully eat before bed and drink a protein shake or have some kind of protein before going to sleep.

How could people who ate before bed still have excellent body composition and perform well, when many in the media were telling us the opposite message? As it turns out, several factors influenced this public health message.

To understand why most people think that eating at night is bad, we need to dive into some research and physiology. An easy place to start would be with your circadian clock or circadian timing system.

We all have an internal clock that regulates our physiology with our daily behaviors and surrounding environment. For many of us, our typical circadian clock keeps us awake and active during the daytime hours and less active during the evening and night hours.

Because many of us are less active in the evening and late night hours, our clock is programmed to slow our internal system down at those times, too. However, does a less active system at night translate to fat gained if you eat at night? It depends.

Food we consume has two fates: iIt is either stored for later use or burned for energy. Since our biological clock slows things down at night, it seems obvious that food we eat at night will more likely be stored rather than burned during this time.

When you eat carbohydrates, the carbohydrates are broken down into smaller components like glucose that enter your blood. In response to the glucose, insulin is secreted from your pancreas to get the glucose into the cells. This effectively lowers blood glucose back to normal.

Research shows that for the same amount of glucose, greater amounts of insulin are required to remove it from the blood during the night as compared to the day. More insulin produced equals more storage at night.

If nighttime eating is not done often, there is likely no problem. However, if its repeated over time, chronically high insulin can lead to a desensitization of the insulin receptors and possibly lead to future problems with your glucose control.

Research has also shown that the energy cost of digesting and processing your foodthat is, the thermic effect of foodgoes down at night. That means that if you eat the same exact meal for breakfast as you do for dinner, youll have a lower energy expenditure in the evening.

We also know that we do not feel as full when we eat foods toward the later part of the day, so theres a chance well eat more food. Nighttime digestion also takes longer for food eaten later in the day to be emptied from the stomach and into the intestines during this time.

In summary, when we eat at night, more insulin is needed; we feel less full, so we eat more; and we have a slower digestion and less energy is used to digest and process food. This suggests that our physiology at night favors storage when we eat towards the later part of the day.

This may not be ideal for body composition. Therefore, it is easy to see how the message quickly spread to avoid eating in the evening.

Michael Ormsbee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food, and Exercise Sciences and Interim Director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University. He received his MS in Exercise Physiology from South Dakota State University and his PhD in Bioenergetics from East Carolina University.

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Why Is Eating at Night So Frowned upon in the Nutrition World? - The Great Courses Daily News

Physiology

Concussion Prevention: Sorting Through the Science to See What’s Sound – American Council on Science and Health

ByJames Smoliga, High Point University

As his helmet collided violently with his opponents shoulder, Luke Kuechly looked like a life-size bobblehead doll. In an instant, the Carolina Panthers star linebacker suffered yet another concussion. His season, and perhaps career, was in jeopardy.

A few weeks earlier, Kuechly began wearing an experimental collar around his neck designed to protect his brain from within. The device, known as the Q-Collar and previously sold as NeuroShield, is designed to mimic the woodpeckers method of injury protection by keeping more blood inside the skull to create a bubble wrap effect around the brain.

So, why didnt this nature-inspired safety equipment avert Luke Kuechlys 2017 concussion, which apparently he still wears?

As a physiologist and sports medicine researcher, I study how the body responds to exercise and other stressors. I also study ways to prevent and treat sports injuries. As the public learns more about the potential long-term dangers of contact sports, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), parents, athletes and sports organizations are desperate to find a quick fix to the concussion crisis. Unfortunately, I do not think there is an easy solution to make inherently high-risk sports safe.

The high altitude argument

Back in 2014, a friend told me about a study which reported that NFL players were 20-30 percent less likely to sustain a concussion in games played at higher altitudes. The researchers theorized that higher altitude caused a slight swelling in the brain, and consequently increased brain volume.

This tighter fit inside the skull would reduce brain slosh during impacts to reduce the likelihood of concussions. Since higher altitude seemed to protect the brain, they argued, it would be beneficial to replicate this tighter fit. The authors proposed this could be achieved by applying slight pressure on the necks jugular veins to trap a bit more blood inside the brain. A few years earlier, a member of their research team filed a patent for such a device a jugular compression collar.

While those less familiar with physiology may have been persuaded by this fascinating-sounding explanation, my fellow researcher, Gerald Zavorsky, and I thought this idea was scientifically implausible. Most importantly, the study defined higher altitude as anything above a meager 600 feet above sea level way too low to have any effect on brain volume. Essentially, our brain volume stays remarkably constant at high altitude, even when we may feel short of breath or lightheaded. In the Mile High City of Denver, which houses the highest NFL stadium in the country at 5,280 feet above sea level, you would be hard-pressed to experience even a miniscule swelling in the brain. However, at much higher elevations, there is actually an increased likelihood for brain swelling which causes a life-threatening emergency called high altitude cerebral edema.

A game of chance

If altitude does not cause a protective increase in brain volume, then why were concussions reduced in NFL games played at greater than 600 feet above sea level? To answer this question, we examined the same publicly available NFL data set. The original study looked at data from two combined seasons (2012 and 2013), but we analyzed a few additional years. We confirmed that concussion rate was indeed statistically reduced at higher altitudes during the 2013 season, but not in the 2012 season. We dug deeper and found no connection between altitude and concussions in the 2014 or 2015 seasons. A separate study in college athletes showed concussions were even more likely at higher altitude.

Since the effect wasnt consistent and repeatability is a major problem in all of science, we suspected the original linkages were due to random chance a mathematical artifact of using a huge data set of nearly 1500 gridiron giants literally butting heads with one another on a weekly basis. If that was the case, we might expect that something completely arbitrary to also be associated with a reduced risk of concussion. And, indeed our analysis demonstrated that is true. It turns out that NFL teams with animal logos, such as the Miami Dolphins, also had a 20-30 percent reduced risk of concussion compared to teams without animal logos, such as the Pittsburgh Steelers, regardless of game altitude.

Based on our analysis, we concluded that random chance, not physiological response, explains why concussions were less likely at altitudes above 600 feet. Thus, an altitude-mimicking collar seems unjustified for preventing concussions.

The woodpecker theory

Supposedly, the Q-Collar also replicates how woodpeckers naturally protect themselves from headaches. According to company information, woodpeckers compress their jugular vein using their neck muscles to induce tighter fit and reduce brain slosh. While this amazing-sounding mechanism is often presented as a fact, it does not seem to be mentioned anywhere in over a century of scientific studies examining woodpeckers.

I thoroughly examined all of the woodpecker papers I could find, and then tracked down all of their references, and repeated the process. I discovered ornithology papers from the 1700s through cutting-edge engineering models of woodpecker biomechanics, but none mentioned jugular compression. Thus, it is not surprising that the company does not cite any scientific references to woodpecker literature.

Even if this mechanism does exist and has been somehow overlooked by woodpecker researchers, evolution gave the woodpecker numerous unique protective adaptations. I teamed up with a woodpecker researcher and published a summary of these mechanisms in October 2018. These include a specialized skull bone structure and a shock-absorbing beak. Woodpeckers even use very specific postures and movements to brace themselves, which helps to dissipate force away from their brains. We concluded that these multiple protective mechanisms work in harmony, which cannot be replicated by simply pushing on ones jugular vein.

New research suggests that woodpeckers may indeed experience brain injuries similar to those seen in humans. Regardless, the physics of woodpecker drumming are quite different than that of sports concussions, which generally happen with unpredictable timing, and involve considerable head rotation. Despite its intuitive appeal, I believe that a woodpecker-mimicking collar is more pseudoscience than innovation.

Beyond sports concussions

As my colleagues and I have been debunking the scientific rationale for the Q-Collar, research examining the Q-Collar seems to have shifted from reducing the risk of concussions, or distinct events following a single hit, to a less tangible goal of reducing brain damage from repeated subconcussive impacts.

New research claims evidence of benefit, based on MRI data. As one article stated in 2016, the collar may have provided a protective effect against brain microstructural changes after repetitive head impacts. An article published in October 2018 from a small study showed that the brains of female soccer players who wore collars for a season seemingly showed no brain damage. Those who did not wear the collar did show small changes in some areas of their brain.

However, some other researchers have expressed concerns over the small numbers of subjects and the high dropout rates in similar studies about the collar. Some physicians have concluded that this evidence is not enough to suggest that it does protect the brain from injury and current promotional campaigns are potentially misleading. I also remain skeptical of these findings, since the clinical utility of this particular type of MRI data remains unclear, especially in relation to long-term health.

As the company aims for FDA approval and looks beyond sports applications, I fear that long-term brain health is being placed in equipment justified by misunderstandings of physiology, coincidental relationships, and yes, even what Ive concluded are incorrect claims about woodpeckers and other animals.

Some may argue that even if it does not work, there is no harm in adding an extra layer of protection. However, I believe this is a dangerous attitude. When athletes feel they are more protected, they have a false sense of extra safety and play more aggressively. This may actually increase risk of injury.

As Luke Kuechly and others can attest, even innovative-sounding equipment cannot stop concussions in contact sports. Unfortunately, we may not know if long-term brain damage can actually be limited by new technologies until it is too late.

*****

James Smoliga, Professor of Physiology, Department of Physical Therapy, High Point University

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

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Concussion Prevention: Sorting Through the Science to See What's Sound - American Council on Science and Health

Physiology

CSUN Study Finds Land-Based Inputs Make Corals Vulnerable to Ocean Warming – CSUN Today

Danielle Becker on the left and CSUN marine biology professor Nyssa Silbiger on the right, collecting samples of Pocillopora acuta from one of the field sites in Moorea, French Polynesia. Photo by DM Barnas,

Land-based input including nutrient and sediment loading can have an adverse impact on a certain species of coral, making them more susceptible to the warmer seawater conditions brought on by climate change, according to a new study by California State University, Northridge marine biologists.

The study by Danielle Becker, who graduated from the university in August with a masters degree in biology, and marine biology professor Nyssa Silbiger offers insight into how human-driven stressors can impact corals metabolic rates, including photosynthesis, respiration and calcification.

Local and global anthropogenic, or human-caused, stressors are rapidly diminishing the biodiversity and structural complexity of coral reefs, Becker said. Therefore, a better understanding of the ecological ramifications of warming and land-based inputs such as sedimentation and nutrient loading on coral reef ecosystems is necessary.

Our findings helped us identify how nutrient-input and sedimentation influenced coral physiology and their ability to function during thermal stress, she continued. With this information, we can better understand how different metabolic rates of corals may change under human-driven stressors. Further, these results indicate that anthropogenic stressors on a local scale may make it even more difficult for corals to deal with global stressors, like climate change.

The study, Nutrient and sediment loading affect multiple facets of coral functionality in a tropical branching coral, appeared last month in the Journal of Experimental Biology (doi:10.1242/jeb.225045).

Our study estimated a range of responses in a branching coral species to nutrient and sediment loading, Silbiger said, measuring metabolism of individuals in the lab to percent cover on the reef. While our current study shows that nutrient and sediment loading are generally detrimental to corals, other studies have conflicting results, she continued. The different biological responses across studies highlight the importance of how many interacting variables, like water flow, depth and distance to shore, can affect a corals response to nutrient loading.

Becker, working with Silbiger, began her study in fall 2018, during the first year of her masters program. She surveyed six sites in fringing coral reefs along the north shore of Moorea in French Polynesia that represented a gradient in nutrient and sediment concentrations. At each site, she measured the percent cover of numerous coral species, including Pocillopora acuta, a fast-growing branching coral that is typically more resistant to human disturbances. She also collected a variety of environmental samples, including the nutrient concentration in the water, tissue nitrogen content in macroalgae and sedimentation rates.

She then measured the photosynthesis, respiration, and calcification rates of the corals, at increasing temperatures, to better understand their ability to perform during thermal stress, and the impact nutrient and sediment loading had on their performance.

Becker, now a first-year doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island, explained that nutrient and sediment loading can occur either naturally from such sources of fish excretion, nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae or submarine groundwater discharge or by human-derived sources such as industrial or agricultural waste and run-off, deforestation, stormwater run-off, coastal development or household products.

These various sources enter the water supply through run-off and drainage that can eventually make their way into our waterways and into ocean environments, especially along coastal cities or populations around the world, Becker said. Land-based inputs nutrients, sedimentation, toxins and pathogens can enter coral reef ecosystems and cause disease and mortality, disrupt ecological functions, change dynamics and feeding behaviors, and prevent coral growth and reproduction.

Becker and Silbiger found that coral metabolic responses significantly declined with exposure to high nutrient concentrations and sedimentation rates, which may have contributed to a decline in the Pocillopora acutacoral cover along the north shore fringing reefs in Moorea.

To our knowledge, this is one of the first published studies that provides evidence for the influences of nutrient and sediment loading on coral thermal performance that encompasses multiple aspects of coral functionality, Becker said. Our findings show that nutrient and sediment loading can have a range of effects on coral functionality, with increased levels of these stressors compromising corals ability to withstand thermal stress and their ability to perform necessary metabolic tasks to thrive in their natural environments.

Metabolic processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and calcification are important indicators of organismal health and are continuously being altered by organisms to adjust their physiological mechanisms in variable environments, she continued. Our study shows that these processes are compromised along a nutrient and sedimentation gradient which can have implications much larger than on an individual scale. Understanding how local-scale anthropogenic stressors influence the responses of corals to temperature can inform coral reef management.

Becker and Silbiger said their findings are relevant to coral reefs around the world.

Nutrient pollution is common anywhere that there is agriculture, coastal development and sewage outfalls, Becker said. French Polynesia has relatively low levels of anthropogenic nutrient and sediment loading compared to other areas of the world. If were seeing these detrimental effects on a lesser scale, it is worth investigating these relationships in other reefs around the world. Our findings also provide valuable information for the use of thermal performance curves to further understand how organisms across environments may respond to local- and global-scale anthropogenic stressors in concert.

College of Science and Mathematics, CORAL, Danielle Becker, Featured, Journal of Experimental Biology, Marine Biology, Nutrient and sediment loading, Nyssa Silbiger, Pocillopora acuta

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CSUN Study Finds Land-Based Inputs Make Corals Vulnerable to Ocean Warming - CSUN Today

Physiology

Exploring Eagle Hearing & Vision Capabilities To Reduce Risk At Wind Farms – CleanTechnica

Clean Power

Published on October 13th, 2020 | by U.S. Department of Energy

October 13th, 2020 by U.S. Department of Energy

Purdue University (Purdue) and the University of Minnesota (UMN) are studying the visual and auditory capabilities of bald and golden eagles to help improve the effectiveness of deterrents used around wind energy facilities. Findings from this research, which is funded by the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO), will be made available to eagle deterrent technology developers.

Bald eagles were removed from the endangered species list in 2007 after a strong population recovery. Golden eagles were not listed, but both eagle species are federally protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA), which prohibits the killing (or take) of eagles, unless permitted. This act requires that wind energy developers and operators do everything they can to minimize risks to eagles through methods such as careful siting, deterrents, or sensors that monitor for incoming wildlife and shut down wind turbines if an eagle approaches.

One way to reduce risks is to develop technologies that produce sound or a visual cue to deter eagles from entering the airspace around wind turbines. To develop highly effective deterrents based on sound or visual stimuli to which eagles are most sensitive, Purdue University explored both eagle hearing and vision, whereas UMN researchers studied eagle hearing and identified possible surrogate species with hearing capabilities similar to bald and golden eagles.

The Purdue research team worked with seven raptor rehabilitation centers to evaluate eagle hearing and vision ranges. They found that both bald and golden eagles have a blind spot near the tops of their heads (Figure 1) that hinders the birds ability to see a wind turbine ahead of them if looking downward (e.g., while hunting). This finding supports the need for a deterrent that is sufficiently alarming to an eagle to cause it to look up when hunting.

Figure 1. Visual field configurations of the golden eagle (left) and bald eagle (right). The Purdue University team found both species of eagles have a blind spot near the tops of their heads (bottom row). Illustration courtesy of Purdue University

The Purdue team also found that it is highly unlikely that golden or bald eagles can detect ultraviolet light. They identified candidate colors (blue/indigo and orange/red) that would be most visible to eagles against various backgrounds. Furthermore, golden eagles exhibited a higher proportion of stress-related behaviors to visual signals than to sound or light-plus-sound signals. Bald eagles showed a higher proportion of stress-related behavior to light-plus-sound signals. In other words, golden eagles are more likely to respond to visual signals, whereas bald eagles are more likely to respond to a combination of sight and sound. Both species showed some level of adaptation to stimuli over time, indicating the need for additional, randomized visual and auditory signal testing.

Purdue researchers concluded that the auditory systems of bald and golden eagles were sufficiently different to warrant species-specific deterrent signals. They discovered that:

The Purdue research team concluded that these types of signals would be good candidates for further testing with bald eagles but that deterrents for golden eagles should be complex tonal harmonics or modulated sounds that do not change very rapidly.

The UMN research team studied raptors admitted to the universitys Raptor Center for treatment and worked with Sia: the Comanche Nation Ethno-Ornithological Initiative in Cyril, Oklahoma, to assess eagle hearing ranges. Once data were collected, they developed a suite of audio test signals and worked with eagles at the Raptor Center to evaluate which of the signals generated the strongest response.

Researchers found that eagles can hear over a frequency range of at least four octaves, centered on 2 kHz, which is roughly a B note on a piano, three octaves above middle C, with an upper limit between 6 kHz and 10 kHz at 80 decibels, and a lower limit that likely extends below 0.2 kHz.

In addition to evaluating eagles physiological responses to synthetic tones, the research team evaluated the auditory properties of eagle vocalizations to better understand how their vocal repertoire might be used in a deterrent. The findings suggest that companies designing eagle deterrents should consider varying frequency and volume patterns to achieve the strongest and least-habituated responses. They also recommend against broadcasting sound outside the observed responsive frequency band of bald and golden eagles to avoid contributing unnecessarily to existing sound-pollution levels.

After exploring the usefulness of red-tailed hawks as potential surrogate species for field testing auditory deterrents, the UMN research team concluded that the hawks auditory systems are similar enough to bald and golden eagles that they may be used as surrogate species when testing new deterrent devices or signals.

This finding is important because of regulatory protections afforded eagles under the BGEPA. Being able to test on red-tailed hawks will provide a significant benefit to technology developers looking to test the usefulness of their systems prior to field trials. However, researchers noted that testing with eagles in a real-world environment, in addition to any testing on red-tailed hawks, will be critical to any deterrent validation study.

The final technical report on this research is pending publication. The University of Minnesota has published onearticleabout their research in theJournal of Comparative Physiology.

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Tags: Bald eagles, purdue, Purdue University, university of minnesota, US, wind turbines birds

U.S. Department of Energy The mission of the U.S. Energy Department is to ensure Americas security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. Learn more.

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Exploring Eagle Hearing & Vision Capabilities To Reduce Risk At Wind Farms - CleanTechnica

Human Behavior

Navigating Office Politics When There Is No Office – Harvard Business Review

Executive Summary

What happens to office politics when you remove the office? Although virtual work has existed forsome time now, the pandemic has dramatically changed the context of work byfully removing the office, eliminating interpersonal contact and physical human interaction and with it, opportunities toengage in tacticsof manipulation or impression management.What does this all mean for office politics? Do the old norms and rules still apply? Can we expect a reduction in bias and nepotism, and an increase inmeritocratic talent managementpractices? Is technology sanitizing the dark side of human behavior at work, forcing us to focus on our actual job performance, reducing the impact of informal networks and soft power at work? To be sure, an office-less environment isnt a panacea. Human nature hasnt changed overnight, and back channel communication and power plays wont simply evaporate. But by following the strategies outlined in this article, youre far more likely to be politically successful during this liminal time as our conceptions of office life continue to shift.

Across jobs, companies, and industries, peoples success has always depended not just on what they produce or deliver, but also on their ability to navigate the murky waters of office politics. A great deal of scientific research has explored the hidden potent forces underlying the formal and informal power dynamics in any group or organization, unsurprisingly highlighting the pervasive and sometimes toxic nature of office politics.

But what happens to office politics when you remove the office? Although virtual work has existed for some time now, the pandemic has dramatically changed the context of work by fully removing the office, eliminating interpersonal contact and physical human interaction and with it, opportunities to engage in tactics of manipulation or impression management. As one of our clients recently lamented: Without the office, how can I pretend to work?

Many people have by now recovered a certain degree of normalcy by returning to the office, albeit less often, and without as many colleagues around. In fact, for a large proportion of the industrialized workforce, the big bulk of work continues to be done from home, with most work interactions confined to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.

What does this all mean for office politics? Do the old norms and rules still apply? Can we expect a reduction in bias and nepotism, and an increase in meritocratic talent management practices? Is technology sanitizing the dark side of human behavior at work, forcing us to focus on our actual job performance, reducing the impact of informal networks and soft power at work?

Even without the office, its nave to expect office politics to disappear, much like a companys culture isnt erased just because people are working from home. In our view, there are three key opportunities that professionals can seize during this transition to office-less work politics:

The opportunity to reset relationships. First, the shift to remote work has profoundly upended the patterns of how we interact at work, and this represents an opportunity to reset your relationships with your boss and colleagues. If youve been less than successful in the past at office politics, this is a moment to reflect on how you can turn the situation around.

Start by considering whether your boss had reason justified or not to question your ability to deliver on assignments as promised. The shift to virtual work is your chance to lay out expectations for both performance and communication channels. If youre crystal clear about how frequently she would like you to communicate with her, and in what way, it gives you the opportunity to over deliver and ensure that she never has to question whether youre working on the right things, or whether theyll be done in a timely fashion.

Then, consider the social side of office politics. Its possible that others invested more time and energy in building personal relationships with colleagues, while you held yourself at a remove. The pandemic provides a natural opportunity to engage more deeply whether or not youve done so in the past. Try suggesting catch-up calls or genuinely inquiring about others well-being.

The opportunity for substance to prevail. At one time or another, almost all of us have had an irritating coworker who is all hat and no cattle, touting their (minimal) accomplishments and charming their way into undeserved promotions. That form of office politics is almost universally reviled and thankfully, its much harder for braggarts and showboats to prevail in a virtual environment. They dont have easy access to interstitial moments in the breakroom or walking out to the parking lot after work to press their agendas. And in a world where every extra minute on a Zoom meeting feels like a lifetime, their bloviating and chest-thumping can be seen for the waste of time that it is. A virtual work environment offers much more of an opportunity to be judged on the output of your work, rather than your messaging around it.

In some cases, the shift to virtual may even help limit unconscious biases. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, actually hires job candidates via chat; new employees often have never spoken to someone live before they start the job. Were always looking at what we can do to make it as much about the work, company founder Matt Mullenweg told The New York Times, and not extraneous stuff, like how youre dressed, how you showed up, how you sound, how you look, where you live. All those things ultimately dont matter, particularly for an internet company. So, lets just remove it from the process entirely.

The opportunity to diversify your networks. These days, many companies if not most are international. The discussion around working virtually often focuses on the fact that its harder to network with colleagues with whom you used to share an office, for the obvious reason that we tend to build deeper emotional and social connections with people who are physically closer to us. But working from remote locations also gives you an advantage: the opportunity to build relationships with colleagues and clients worldwide that you may have neglected otherwise. In that sense, virtual work is a great leveler, because it reduced our bias for working with those who are close to us, which, by extension, invites us to work with people who are not just physically distant, but also psychologically more diverse (culture and values travel together).

So, this is a great opportunity to diversity your networks. You can do this by setting up one-on-one calls, or even engaging in small ways, such as sending an email to check in, or forwarding interesting articles. This becomes an important competitive advantage because so many professionals because they havent consciously focused on it tend to have remarkably homogeneous networks, filled with people who work at their same company or in their same office. You can make your network much more resilient, and ultimately more useful, by focusing on developing bridging capital building heterogeneous connections with colleagues who are different from you and connecting with colleagues in other parts of the world.

To be sure, an office-less environment isnt a panacea. Human nature hasnt changed overnight, and back channel communication and power plays wont simply evaporate. Its also possible that, as the world slowly reopens and some professionals come back to the office, we run the risk of developing a two-tiered system of office politics, where the people who are able to be together in the office experience preferential treatment compared to those who are still working from home, even in the absence of actual performance differences between both groups. Those are legitimate concerns. But by following the strategies above, youre far more likely to be politically successful during this liminal time as our conceptions of office life continue to shift.

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Navigating Office Politics When There Is No Office - Harvard Business Review

Human Behavior

Researcher explains benefits of using geotagged content in research – UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff – University at Buffalo Reporter

In a recent commentary published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, UB geographic information science expert Yingjie Hu and colleague Ruo-Qian Wang wrote about how Twitters decision to remove users ability to tag the precise locations of Tweets might affect research in disaster response, public health and other areas.

The authors concluded that the change may not have a pivotal impact on studies that rely on this kind of content,as a large proportion of precisely geotagged posts in three Twitter datasets they examined originated from third-party apps like Instagram (the datasets were originally collected for other studies examining peoples reaction to extreme weather events). The researchers also noted that Twitter still allows for less precise geotagging, enabling users to tag places such as a restaurant, a park, a city or a country, as opposed to a precise latitude and longitude.

Nevertheless, the recent change raises a number of issues that scientists must consider, Hu and Wang said in their Sept. 7 piece.

From a privacy protection perspective, Twitters decision reflects the concerns of society in general on privacy issues. Researchers should increase our awareness of the potential privacy and safety issues that may exist in our data and research practice, and should follow relevant guidelines, such as those from institutional review boards (IRBs), to protect the privacy of individuals, according to Hu, assistant professor of geography, College of Arts and Sciences, and Wang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, Rutgers University-New Brunswick School of Engineering, writing in Nature Human Behavior.

In an interview with UBNow, Hu explained how geotagged social media content can enable valuable research.

After a major disaster, such as an earthquake or a hurricane, geotagged information can provide firsthand information about the situation on the ground, Hu said. Even before first responders arrive at those locations, information posted directly by the people from the disaster-affected area can inform disaster response.

Another application for geotagged content is in public health. From geotagged tweets, we can know what people are talking about and from which locations, and we can further identify the geographic areas where people are talking about flu, cough or other health-related keywords. In political science, geotagged posts can provide some understanding of peoples political opinions in different geographic locations, or of how people are reacting to new government policies.

As scientists conduct this type of research, Hu believes its vital not only for researchers like himself to think about privacy and ways to safeguard data, but for app developers and corporations to do the same. One important step involves transparency. He argues that its important for companies to make it clear to users how their data may be used. And that goes for both social media platforms that allow people to geotag posts, and for apps that engage in location-tracking, he says.

I think it will be good if individuals can have more information and get a better understanding of how their data are collected, Hu said.

Ultimately, he added, If we can provide good privacy-protection measures on location data, we can use those data for many applications that benefit our society, such as in disaster response, public health, transportation modeling and other areas.

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Researcher explains benefits of using geotagged content in research - UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff - University at Buffalo Reporter

Human Behavior

Some birds leave no one behind they share their food with those less fortunate – ZME Science

Helping others is a key feature of human behavior but its not necessarily something exclusive to humans, according to a new study. Researchers found birds care about the fate of conspecific birds, noticing how much food others have and sharing theirs with individuals that are going hungry.

Food-sharing observed among humans in daily-life events such as dinner parties, and there is evidence that this was present even in pre-historic humans. But food-sharing is also relatively common in the wild, especially between individuals and their offspring.

My earlier research has shown that birds also sometimes do something for someone else, said Jorg Massen, lead-author, in a statement. The question was, however, whether this is an instinctive behavior that is ingrained, or whether this behavior is flexible, and whether these birds might also take into account how great the need of the other animal is.

To investigate sociality in birds, Massen worked with Azure-winged magpies in an experiment. He gave one bird an abundance of mealworms, a popular delicacy for these birds, while the rest had limited access or were given nothing at all. The magpie had the chance to share the mealworms through a wire mesh.

The researchers found out that the birds were inclined to share food with their peers. They differentiate, however, between others that have or do not have food, and subsequently cater to that lack. Females shared with the ones that had nothing, while males always shared, likely as a way to showcase themselves as generous.

The magpies were more inclined to share food as a response to begging but would share with those less fortunate even if they werent asked. This shows that they might truly notice the need of others, even without specific behavior from other birds. They may even show sympathy, according to Massen.

The study shows that magpies can exhibit prosocial behavior just like people, and that they may well have the same motivation as we do to engage in such behavior. This might indicate that they can empathize with the situation in which their peers find themselves and act accordingly. Still, further work is needed to tell if this is the case.

At the same time, the research also confirmed what scientists previously found in other animal species: cooperative breeders that raise their young together have a strong tendency to help each other.

Because we let our children grow up in groups, we have become prosocial and can work well together. We now also see this in the azure-winged magpies, said Massen.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Some birds leave no one behind they share their food with those less fortunate - ZME Science

Human Behavior

Find ways to lessen the escalation by being a calming presence – austin360

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased anxiety levels for many of us. Would you agree that the pandemic along with economic insecurity and political animosities are making our collective society more anxious?

My good friend, mentor, and colleague pastor, Peter Steinke, passed away in July at the age of 82. The author of 14 books, he was the premier interpreter for faith community leaders of an influential human behavior theory called "family systems." Pete was especially adept at helping clergy properly understand the workings of anxiety in social settings.

In a 2015 interview, I asked him to expound on the role of anxiety in social interactions. He responded: "Anxiety is not a negative. Anxiety just is. It becomes a negative when it intensifies or becomes prolonged because it interferes with clear thinking. Anxiety is an informer, rather than an enemy. It tells us something about ourselves and the world around us."

Petes teaching and work is especially instructive during this time of heightened anxiety for many individuals, and for society as a whole. "Uproar: Calm Leadership in Anxious Times" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) is the last book written by Steinke. Intended for a general audience, its relatively short and encourages the practice of what he called "non-anxious presence" as a balm for conflicted relationships. To boot, an unanxious presence is also a good practice for keeping your cool while driving on Interstate 35.

I first met Pete 30 years ago when I was a newly ordained pastor in Houston. My church council hired Pete to guide staff conversations to help determine expectations and roles. The day-long retreat focused, among other things, on the importance of staying connected even when disagreements surface. In situations of conflict, the practice of unanxious presence, as opposed to the responses of defensiveness or attacking others, helps defuse potentially volatile situations which in turn frees up participants to consider best options for problem solving.

In John 8, Jesus is tracked down by a mob wanting his approval to stone to death a woman "caught" in adultery. It was a set-up and Jesus knew it. The womans male partner also guilty in the affair was nowhere to be seen. As if contemplating another topic while seated on the ground, Jesus paid the fomenting mob scant attention as he drew figures in the sand with a stick. He didnt meet the mobs energy level, but defused it with his supposed indifference.

He then spoke: "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." One by one, stones falling from unclenched fists plunked harmlessly upon the ground. The crowd dispersed. Jesus blessed the woman on her way and invited her to live in a new way.

Pete Steinke would say that Jesus in John 8 modeled an unanxious presence. Dont misunderstand: There are appropriate times for lifting voices in loud protest, or publicly and forcibly confronting wrongdoing, or using anger as fuel for a much needed stand of self-protection. An enraged Jesus cleaned out the Jerusalem temple of greedy marketers who were taking advantage of poor and powerless pilgrims. Most of the time, however, Jesus chose not the path of violent force, but of calm confrontation as he challenged listeners to change their ways.

Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. knew the power of an unanxious presence. Practicing and teaching the burdensome arts of nonviolent resistance to their followers, they knew the societal changes they sought would not be wrought by violent force.

The use of an unanxious presence can be a better first option for many of us in situations of conflict. If more of us choose to practice it, our collective society could be less antagonistic and would exhibit other improved outcomes.

Steinke also told me in that same interview: "Weve got to work together more often . . . but when youre anxious, what do you do? You pull apart, you separate, you get into your own little fortress, which is the opposite of what we need to do.

"Were here to cooperate with one another thats civil society."

The Rev. T. Carlos Anderson directs social ministry efforts for Austin City Lutherans, and is the author of "There is a Balm in Huntsville."

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Find ways to lessen the escalation by being a calming presence - austin360

Human Behavior

How will COVID-19 impact the flu in Florida? – ABC Action News

The flu season has officially started in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Now, add in an ongoing global health crisis and were all wondering just how the coronavirus pandemic will impact flu season in Florida this year.

Its a great question and something we are talking a lot about in the hospital, said Dr. Nicole Iovine, an associate professor and Chief Epidemiologist at the University of Florida Shands Hospital in Gainesville.

Dr. Marissa Levine, a public health expert and professor at the University of South Florida, is also paying close attention to the season, which has already started slowly.

Both are cautiously optimistic this years flu season could be one for the record books, in a good way.

Id hate to predict and say definitively thats going to happen but we have potential to have an insignificant season, said Levine.

It all depends on human behavior which is the big black box, said Iovine.

With travel down, mask-wearing up and social distancing a way of life, these doctors say the same practices were taking to ward off COVID-19 will also, likely, lower our risk of catching the flu.

But more telling is what just happened during peak season on the other side of the world.

If you look at the southern hemisphere for example, where theyve already experienced winter. Places like Australia had not just a mild, but an absent flu season, explained Levine.

Still, these doctors warn we all have reason to remain concerned about the flu season which peaks in January.

We see respiratory co-infections all the time. Theres no reason we cant see COVID and influenza affect a person at the same time and that will not be a good situation, said Iovine.

Both doctors advise individuals to wear their mask, keep socially distancing practices in place and get a flu shot.

It is extremely worrisome. This is unprecedented times so we are very, very concerned about the combination of flu and the coronavirus, said Iovine.

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How will COVID-19 impact the flu in Florida? - ABC Action News