Geometry of an electron determined for the first time

Quantum computing concept

Physicists at the University of Basel are able to show for the first time how a single electron looks in an artificial atom. A newly developed method enables them to show the probability of an electron being present in a space. This allows improved control of electron spins, which could serve as the smallest information unit in a future quantum computer. The experiments were published in Physical Review Letters and the related theory in Physical Review B.

The spin of an electron is a promising candidate for use as the smallest information unit (qubit) of a quantum computer. Controlling and switching this spin or coupling it with other spins is a challenge on which numerous research groups worldwide are working. The stability of a single spin and the entanglement of various spins depends, among other things, on the geometry of the electrons -- which previously had been impossible to determine experimentally.

Only possible in artificial atoms

Scientists in the teams headed by professors Dominik Zumbühl and Daniel Loss from the Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel have now developed a method by which they can spatially determine the geometry of electrons in quantum dots.

A quantum dot is a potential trap which allows to confine free electrons in an area which is about 1000 times larger than a natural atom. Because the trapped electrons behave similar to electrons bound to an atom, quantum dots are also known as "artificial atoms."

The electron is held in the quantum dot by electric fields. However, it moves within the space and, with different probabilities corresponding to a wave function, remains in certain locations within its confinement.

Charge distribution sheds light

The scientists use spectroscopic measurements to determine the energy levels in the quantum dot and study the behavior of these levels in magnetic fields of varying strength and orientation. Based on their theoretical model, it is possible to determine the electron's probability density and thus its wave function with a precision on the sub-nanometer scale.

"To put it simply, we can use this method to show what an electron looks like for the first time," explains Loss.

Better understanding and optimization

The researchers, who work closely with colleagues in Japan, Slovakia and the US, thus gain a better understanding of the correlation between the geometry of electrons and the electron spin, which should be stable for as long as possible and quickly switchable for use as a qubit.

"We are able to not only map the shape and orientation of the electron, but also control the wave function according to the configuration of the applied electric fields. This gives us the opportunity to optimize control of the spins in a very targeted manner," says Zumbühl.

The spatial orientation of the electrons also plays a role in the entanglement of several spins. Similarly to the binding of two atoms to a molecule, the wave functions of two electrons must lie on one plane for successful entanglement.

With the aid of the developed method, numerous earlier studies can be better understood and the performance of spin qubits can be further optimized in the future.

Meteor magnets in outer space: Finding elusive giant planets

Jupiter.

Astronomers believe planets like Jupiter shield us from space objects that would otherwise slam into Earth. Now they're closer to learning whether giant planets act as guardians of solar systems elsewhere in the galaxy.

A UCR-led team has discovered two Jupiter-sized planets about 150 light years away from Earth that could reveal whether life is likely on the smaller planets in other solar systems.

"We believe planets like Jupiter have profoundly impacted the progression of life on Earth. Without them, humans might not be here to have this conversation," said Stephen Kane, lead study author and UCR associate professor of planetary astrophysics. "Understanding how many other stars have planets like Jupiter could be very important for learning about the habitability of planets in those systems."

Along with liquid water oceans, Kane said astronomers believe such planets have the ability to act as 'slingshots,' pulling objects like meteors, comets, and asteroids out of their trajectories en route to impact with small, rocky planets.

Many larger planets have been found close to their stars. However, those aren't as useful for learning about the architecture of our own solar system, where the giant planets including Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all farther from the sun. Big planets far from their stars have, until now, been harder to find.

A study recently accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal details how Kane's team found success in a novel approach combining traditional detection methods with the latest technologies.

One popular method of searching for exoplanets -- planets in other solar systems -- involves monitoring stars for "wobble," in which a star moves toward and away from Earth. The wobble is likely caused by the gravitational pull a nearby planet is exerting on it. When a star wobbles, it's a clue there may be an exoplanet nearby.

When the planet is far from its star, the gravitational pull is weaker, making the wobble smaller and harder to detect. The other problem with using the wobble detection method, Kane said, is that it just takes a long time. Earth only takes a year to orbit the sun. Jupiter takes 12, Saturn takes 30, and Neptune takes an astonishing 164 years.

The larger exoplanets also take many years to circle their stars, which means observing a complete orbit could engulf an astronomer's entire career. To accelerate the process, Kane and his team combined the wobble method with direct imaging. This way, if the team thought a planet might be causing wobble, they could confirm it by sight.

Obtaining a direct image of a planet quadrillions of miles away is no simple task. It requires the largest possible telescope, one that is at least 32 feet long and highly sensitive. Even from this distance, the light of the stars can overexpose the image, obscuring the target planets.

The team overcame this challenge by learning to recognize and eliminate the patterns in their images created by starlight. Removing the starlight allowed Kane's team to see what remained.

"Direct imaging has come a long way both in terms of understanding the patterns we find, and in terms of the instruments used to create the images, which are much higher resolution than they've ever been," Kane said. "You see this every time a new smartphone is released -- the camera detectors are always being improved and that's true in astronomy as well."

In this project, the team applied the combination of wobble and imaging method to 20 stars. In addition to the two being orbited by giant Jupiter-like planets that had not been previously discovered, the team also detected a third, previously observed star with a giant planet in its system.

Going forward, the team will continue to monitor 10 of the stars where planetary companions could not be ruled out. In addition, Kane is planning a new project to measure how long it takes these exoplanets to complete rotations toward and away from their stars, which cannot currently be measured.

Kane's team is international, with members at the Australian Astronomical Observatory, University of Southern Queensland, University of New South Wales and Macquarie University in Australia, as well as at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. They are also spread across the U.S. at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, AZ, Southern Connecticut State University, NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University in California and the Carnegie Institution of Washington in D.C.

"This discovery is an important piece of the puzzle because it helps us understand the factors that make a planet habitable and whether that's common or not," said Kane. "We are converging rapidly on answers to this question that the past 3,000 recorded years of history could only wish they had available to them."

A family of comets reopens the debate about the origin of Earth's water

Illustration of comet over Earth

Where did the Earth's water come from? Although comets, with their icy nuclei, seem like ideal candidates, analyses have so far shown that their water differs from that in our oceans.

Now, however, an international team, bringing together CNRS researchers at the Laboratory for Studies of Radiation and Matter in Astrophysics and Atmospheres (Paris Observatory -- PSL/CNRS/ Sorbonne University/University of Cergy-Pontoise) and the Laboratory of Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics (Paris Observatory -- PSL/CNRS/Sorbonne University/University of Paris), has found that one family of comets, the hyperactive comets, contains water similar to terrestrial water. The study, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on May 20, 2019, is based in particular on measurements of comet 46P/Wirtanen carried out by SOFIA, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.

According to the standard theory, the Earth is thought to have formed from the collision of small celestial bodies known as planetesimals. Since such bodies were poor in water, Earth's water must have been delivered either by a larger planetesimal or by a shower of smaller objects such as asteroids or comets.

To trace the source of terrestrial water, researchers study isotopic ratios (1), and in particular the ratio in water of deuterium to hydrogen, known as the D/H ratio (deuterium is a heavier form of hydrogen). As a comet approaches the Sun, its ice sublimes (2), forming an atmosphere of water vapour that can be analysed remotely. However, the D/H ratios of comets measured so far have generally been twice to three times that of ocean water, which implies that comets only delivered around 10% of the Earth's water.

When comet 46P/Wirtanen approached the Earth in December 2018 it was analysed using the SOFIA airborne observatory, carried aboard a Boeing aircraft. This was the third comet found to exhibit the same D/H ratio as terrestrial water. Like the two previous comets, it belongs to the category of hyperactive comets which, as they approach the Sun, release more water than the surface area of their nucleus should allow. The excess is produced by ice-rich particles present in their atmosphere.

Intrigued, the researchers determined the active fraction (i.e. the fraction of the nucleus surface area required to produce the amount of water present in their atmosphere) of all comets with a known D/H ratio. They found that there was an inverse correlation between the active fraction and the D/H ratio of the water vapour: the more a comet tends towards hyperactivity (i.e. an active fraction exceeding 1), the more its D/H ratio decreases and approaches that of the Earth.

Hyperactive comets, whose water vapour is partially derived from icy grains expelled into their atmosphere, thus have a D/H ratio similar to that of terrestrial water, unlike comets whose gas halo is produced only by surface ice. The researchers suggest that the D/H ratios measured in the atmosphere of the latter are not necessarily indicative of the ice present in their nucleus. If this hypothesis is correct, the water in all cometary nuclei may in fact be very similar to terrestrial water, reopening the debate on the origin of Earth's oceans.

Notes:

(1) The isotopic ratio is the ratio, within the same sample, between two isotopes (two forms with a different mass) of a chemical element. This can be used both to date a sample and determine its source.

(2) Sublimation is the direct transition from a solid (in this case, ice) to a gas (water vapour).

Origami-inspired materials could soften the blow for reusable spacecraft

Origami shapes

Space vehicles like SpaceX's Falcon 9 are designed to be reusable. But this means that, like Olympic gymnasts hoping for a gold medal, they have to stick their landings.

Landing is stressful on a rocket's legs because they must handle the force from the impact with the landing pad. One way to combat this is to build legs out of materials that absorb some of the force and soften the blow.

University of Washington researchers have developed a novel solution to help reduce impact forces -- for potential applications in spacecraft, cars and beyond. Inspired by the paper folding art of origami, the team created a paper model of a metamaterial that uses "folding creases" to soften impact forces and instead promote forces that relax stresses in the chain. The team published its results May 24 in Science Advances.

"If you were wearing a football helmet made of this material and something hit the helmet, you'd never feel that hit on your head. By the time the energy reaches you, it's no longer pushing. It's pulling," said corresponding author Jinkyu Yang, a UW associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

Yang and his team designed this new metamaterial to have the properties they wanted.

"Metamaterials are like Legos. You can make all types of structures by repeating a single type of building block, or unit cell as we call it," he said. "Depending on how you design your unit cell, you can create a material with unique mechanical properties that are unprecedented in nature."

The researchers turned to the art of origami to create this particular unit cell.

"Origami is great for realizing the unit cell," said co-author Yasuhiro Miyazawa, a UW aeronautics and astronautics doctoral student. "By changing where we introduce creases into flat materials, we can design materials that exhibit different degrees of stiffness when they fold and unfold. Here we've created a unit cell that softens the force it feels when someone pushes on it, and it accentuates the tension that follows as the cell returns to its normal shape."

Just like origami, these unit cell prototypes are made out of paper. The researchers used a laser cutter to cut dotted lines into paper to designate where to fold. The team folded the paper along the lines to form a cylindrical structure, and then glued acrylic caps on either end to connect the cells into a long chain.

The researchers lined up 20 cells and connected one end to a device that pushed and set off a reaction throughout the chain. Using six GoPro cameras, the team tracked the initial compression wave and the following tension wave as the unit cells returned to normal.

The chain composed of the origami cells showed the counterintuitive wave motion: Even though the compressive pushing force from the device started the whole reaction, that force never made it to the other end of the chain. Instead, it was replaced by the tension force that started as the first unit cells returned to normal and propagated faster and faster down the chain. So the unit cells at the end of the chain only felt the tension force pulling them back.

"Impact is a problem we encounter on a daily basis, and our system provides a completely new approach to reducing its effects. For example, we'd like to use it to help both people and cars fare better in car accidents," Yang said. "Right now it's made out of paper, but we plan to make it out of a composite material. Ideally, we could optimize the material for each specific application."

Additional co-authors are Hiromi Yasuda, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania who completed this research as a UW aeronautics and astronautics doctoral student; Efstathios Charalampidis and Panayotis Kevrekidis at the University of Massachusetts; and Christopher Chong at Bowdoin College. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research and the Washington Research Foundation.

Certain placental stem cells can regenerate heart after heart attack

Heart illustration.

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have demonstrated that stem cells derived from the placenta known as Cdx2 cells can regenerate healthy heart cells after heart attacks in animal models. The findings, published in the May 20 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may represent a novel treatment for regenerating the heart and other organs.

"Cdx2 cells have historically been thought to only generate the placenta in early embryonic development, but never before were shown to have the ability to regenerate other organs, which is why this is so exciting. These findings may also pave the way to regenerative therapy of other organs besides the heart," said principal investigator Hina Chaudhry, MD, Director of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "They almost seem like a super-charged population of stem cells, in that they can target the site of an injury and travel directly to the injury through the circulatory system and are able to avoid rejection by the host immune system."

This team of Mount Sinai researchers had previously discovered that a mixed population of mouse placental stem cells can help the hearts of pregnant female mice recover after an injury that could otherwise lead to heart failure. In that study, they showed that the placental stem cells migrated to the mother's heart and directly to the site of the heart injury. The stem cells then programmed themselves as beating heart cells to help the repair process.

The new study was aimed at determining what type of stem cells made the heart cells regenerate. The investigators started by looking at Cdx2 cells, the most prevalent stem cell type in the previously identified mixed population, and found them to comprise the highest percentage (40 percent) of those assisting the heart from the placenta.

To test the Cdx2 cells' regenerative properties, the researchers induced heart attacks in three groups of male mice. One group received Cdx2 stem cell treatments derived from end-gestation mouse placentas, one group received placenta cells that did not express Cdx2, and the third group received a saline control. The team used magnetic resonance imaging to analyze all mice immediately after the heart attacks, and three months after induction with cells or saline. They found that every mouse in the group with Cdx2 stem cell treatments had significant improvement and regeneration of healthy tissue in the heart. By three months, the stem cells had migrated directly to the heart injury and formed new blood vessels and new cardiomyocytes (beating heart muscle cells). The mice injected with saline and the non-Cdx2 placenta cells went into heart failure and their hearts had no evidence of regeneration.

Researchers noted two other properties of the Cdx2 cells: they have all the proteins of embryonic stem cells, which are known to generate all organs of the body, but also additional proteins, giving them the ability to travel directly to the injury site, which is something embryonic stem cells cannot do, and they appear to avoid the host immune response. The immune system did not reject these cells when administered from the placenta to another animal.

"These properties are critical to the development of a human stem cell treatment strategy, which we have embarked on, as this could be a promising therapy in humans. We have been able to isolate Cdx2 cells from term human placentas also; therefore, we are now hopeful that we can design a better human stem cell treatment for the heart than we have seen in the past," explained Dr. Chaudhry. "Past strategies tested in humans were not based on stem cell types that were actually shown to form heart cells, and use of embryonic stem cells for this goal is associated with ethics and feasibility concerns. Placentas are routinely discarded around the world and thus almost a limitless source."

"These results were very surprising to us, as no other cell type tested in clinical trials of human heart disease were ever shown to become beating heart cells in petri dishes, but these did and they knew exactly where to go when we injected them into the circulation," said first author Sangeetha Vadakke-Madathil, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Study identifies dog breeds, physical traits that pose highest risk of biting children

Beware-of-dog sign.

New research at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center identifies dog breeds and physical traits that pose the highest risk of biting with severe injury. Doctors want parents of young children to use this information when deciding which dog to own.

The study, published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, explores the risks of dog bite injuries to the face in children and bite severity by breed, size and head structure. Researchers found pit bulls and mixed breed dogs have the highest risk of biting and cause the most damage per bite. The same goes for dogs with wide and short heads weighing between 66 and 100 pounds.

"The purpose of this study was to evaluate dog bites in children, and we specifically looked at how breed relates to bite frequency and bite severity," said Dr. Garth Essig, lead author and otolaryngologist at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center. "Because mixed breed dogs account for a significant portion of dog bites, and we often didn't know what type of dog was involved in these incidents, we looked at additional factors that may help predict bite tendency when breed is unknown like weight and head shape."

To assess bite severity, researchers reviewed 15 years of dog-related facial trauma cases from Nationwide Children's Hospital and the University of Virginia Health System. They looked at wound size, tissue tearing, bone fractures and other injuries severe enough to warrant consultation by a facial trauma and reconstructive surgeon and created a damage severity scale.

Researchers also performed an extensive literature search from 1970 to current for dog bite papers that reported breed to determine relative risk of biting from a certain breed. This was combined with hospital data to determine relative risk of biting and average tissue damage of bite.

"There's an estimated 83 million owned dogs in the United States and that number continues to climb," said Dr. Essig. "We wanted to provide families with data to help them determine the risk to their children and inform them on which types of dogs do well in households with kids."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4.7 million people in the United State are bitten by dogs annually, and 20 percent of these victims require medical care for their injuries. Those who require treatment after dog bites are predominately children ages 5 to 9 years.

"Young children are especially vulnerable to dog bites because they may not notice subtle signs that a dog may bite," said Dr. Charles Elmaraghy, study co-author, associate professor of otolaryngology at Ohio State's College of Medicine and chief of otolaryngology at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "We see everything from simple lacerations to injuries in which there's significant tissue loss that needs grafting or other reconstructive surgery."

Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of The Ohio State University College of Medicine said, "This research highlights a significant public health issue and provides a new decision-making framework for families considering dog ownership."

The circumstances that cause a dog to bite vary and may be influenced by breed behavior tendencies and the behavior of the victim, parents and dog owner.

"Children imitate their parents," said Meghan Herron, associate professor of veterinary clinical services at Ohio State's College of Veterinary Medicine. "Be a model for your child and avoid any confrontational or risky interactions that might trigger a fear or fear aggression response if the child were to mimic it. This includes harsh reprimands, smacking, pushing off of furniture and forcibly taking away an item."

Herron offers the following tips for dog owners:

1. Most bites to children occur from a family dog when the dog is resting and the child approaches. Try to provide and encourage resting places away from where children run and play.
2. Many bites to children occur even when an adult is in the room. If you can't devote your attention to the interactions between the dog and child, it may be best to have a physical barrier between them, such as a baby gate or crate for the dog. This is especially important for toddlers whose behaviors may be more erratic, unpredictable or frightening to a dog.
3. Teach children to let resting dogs lie and to stay out of dog crates, beds and other resting places that are designated for the dog. If the dog's favorite spot is on the couch, put a towel or blanket down to clearly delineate the dog space versus child space.
4. Children should not approach, touch or otherwise interact with dogs while they are eating. Provide quiet areas for dogs to eat away from areas where children run and play. Rawhides and other flavored chews should only be given when dogs are separated from child play areas.
5. Teach children to find an adult if a dog takes one of their toys or snacks. Children should never attempt to retrieve these items themselves.

The perils of a leader who is too extroverted

Extroverts are often seen as natural leaders in organizations. But a new study suggests that some leaders may have too much of a good thing.

Researchers found that informal leaders were better liked and more sought after for advice when they hit a middle "sweet spot" on levels of assertiveness and warmth, two facets of extroversion.

Team members reacted less favorably to leaders who were high on assertiveness or warmth.

"Overly extroverted leaders can come across as too pushy or too annoying," said Jia (Jasmine) Hu, lead author of the study and associate professor of management and human resources at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

"A moderate amount of assertiveness and warmth may be optimal."

The study did find one factor that helped highly extroverted leaders receive better marks from their peers: prosocial motivation, or the desire to look out for others' welfare.

The study appears online in the Journal of Applied Psychology and will be published in a future print edition.

The researchers did two related studies. The first involved 260 business undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to 78 self-managed teams. The students worked in their teams on a variety of projects through a full semester.

At the beginning of the semester, students rated themselves on two facets of extroversion. One was assertiveness, which is the desire to be dominant and forceful. The second was warmth, which is how friendly and outgoing they were.

The students' prosocial motivation was measured by asking them how much they agreed with statements like "I care about benefiting others through my work."

Later in the semester, students rated each member of their team on how much they showed leadership in their group activities. Based on these ratings, the researchers chose the person on each team who was seen by most of their peers as the leader.

Team members also rated how much they liked each of their team members and how much they went to him or her for advice in solving problems related to their tasks.

A second, nearly identical study involved 337 employees on work teams in a large retail company in China. Like with the students, these were self-managed teams without formal leaders.

Both studies had very similar results.

Leaders who were extroverted tended to be better liked and more sought after for advice by their team members -- but only up to a point.

Leaders who rated themselves as very assertive or very warm tended to see a drop-off in how much their fellow team members liked them and sought their advice.

Hu said it was a case of too much of a good thing.

"If you're too assertive as a team member, people think you're pushy and they don't like that," she said.

"And if you're too warm and friendly, that can be overwhelming for others who feel pressured to respond in the same enthusiastic way."

But fellow employees can put up with more extroversion if they think you're doing it for others.

"If you're prosocially motivated, people see more benefits to your assertiveness and warmth. They know you're not doing it just to promote yourself, but have a genuine interest in the whole team. That means a lot," Hu said.

While this study was done with informal leaders, Hu said she believes the results could also apply to formally chosen supervisors. And she noted that even in teams with formal bosses, informal leaders like those in this study often emerge and play a key role in a team's success.

Co-authors on the study were Kaifeng Jiang, associate professor of management and human resources at Ohio State's Fisher College; Zhen Zhang of Arizona State University; and Wansi Chen of East China University of Science and Technology.

Fearful customers sensitive to size and scope of a data breach while angry customers are not

Customers who feel afraid in the wake of a data breach care more about the size and scope of the breach than do angry customers, according to research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

The findings also extend to the stock market, where a company's stock price can be influenced by the size of the breach when the news coverage emphasizes fear, rather than anger.

"The emotions of fear and anger will elicit different reactions," said Subimal Chatterjee, distinguished professor in marketing at Binghamton University's School of Management. "In the wake of a data breach, we wanted to explore those different reactions and see if people acted to protect themselves or directed feelings toward those responsible."

Chatterjee partnered with faculty across multiple disciplines within the School of Management. Working with Sumantra Sarkar, assistant professor of management information systems, Cihan Uzmanoglu, assistant professor of finance, and Xiang Gao, a Binghamton University PhD alumnus now at the Paseka School of Business at Minnesota State University, the group conducted three studies to get to their findings.

"So much business is now conducted online, and while that provides many conveniences, it opens up new threats. Data breaches are constantly in the news, and the scope of some of these breaches are huge," Sarkar said. "When you hear that millions of people may be impacted, how do you react?"

Two of the studies surveyed how consumers reacted to the scope of a data breach. They found that only the customers who felt fear after a breach were sensitive to the size and scope of the breach, while scope didn't matter to angry consumers.

"Fearful consumers were sensitive to knowing, for example, if the breach only affected 100 customers or 10 million customers, and we found that the larger the scope, the larger the reaction," said Chatterjee. "Meanwhile, angry consumers didn't care if it was 10 customers or 10 million customers. Their focus wasn't on the scope. They were directing their focus and anger on the perpetrator."

The findings suggest that among consumers who are fearful, the larger the breach the more likely they are to think that they are at risk. And the threat becomes more vivid to them as the scope of the breach increases.

"Consumers may often find themselves imaging the worst-case scenario when these large-scale data breaches happen. Is my information safe? Is my credit card information being used by the hackers? These images will help determine whether they'll ever make a purchase from that company again," said Chatterjee.

A third study examined 12,000 news stories about data breaches. Testing for keywords that suggested either a fearful or angry response in the coverage, the researchers then compared the findings to stock prices for affected companies at the time of the coverage.

They found that the stock market reacts similarly to how consumers react: Fear makes the stock market sensitive to the scope of a data breach, while anger makes the stock market insensitive to the scope of a data breach.

"The intuition is that changes in stock prices should reveal the underlying consumer reactions to news of data breaches," said Uzmanoglu. "Using this approach, we show that data breaches that affect more customers are associated with more negative stock returns, and that this effect primarily comes from data breaches that trigger emotions of fear rather than anger."

Easing fears in the wake of a data breach should be a priority, the researchers said.

"From day one, you need to let your customers know that you are on top of this and move to ease those fears they may have. You don't want them picturing that worst-case scenario," said Chatterjee.

Researchers say this could mean clarifying your company's disaster recovery plans, training customers on the basics of data security, or offering free services such as credit monitoring or fraud protection services.

The researchers also recommend being extra careful about how you communicate the scope of the data breach, as fearful customers will be very sensitive to the size of breaches.

"If you have 500 million customers that were affected by a breach, but it only represents around 16 percent of your customer base, you may want to focus on that smaller number in your communications to minimize the threat to fearful customers," Chatterjee said.

Study examines consequences of workplace bullying

New research reveals how frequently being the target of workplace bullying not only leads to health-related problems but can also cause victims to behave badly themselves.

The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in collaboration with Uninettuno Telematic International University in Italy, found that in some cases this is characterised by a lack of problem solving and high avoidance coping strategies. For example, drinking alcohol when having a problem, experiencing very frequent negative emotions, such as anger, fear and sadness, and high work 'moral disengagement', which refers to the way individuals rationalise their actions and absolve themselves of responsibility for the consequences.

Bullying is one of the major occupational stresses for employees and the effects can compromise their development and health, as well as interfere with the achievement of both personal and professional goals.

It is usually differentiated as work-related and personal-related bullying. The former refers to bullying affecting workload -- for example removing responsibility -- and work processes, such as attacks on someone's professional status. The latter refers to both indirect -- for example exclusion and isolation -- and direct negative behaviour, such as physical abuse.

While previous research has shown a link between being the target of bullying and behavioral problems, for the first time this study identified different configurations of victims by considering not only exposure to and types of bullying, but also health problems and bad behaviour.

The study also examined how these groups differ in terms of negative emotions experienced in relation to work, coping strategies, and moral disengagement.

Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the study was led by Dr Roberta Fida, a senior lecturer in work psychology at UEA's Norwich Business School. She said: "Overall, our results show the need to consider not only exposure to and types of bullying but also their associated consequences. In particular, the findings highlight that victimisation is associated not only with health problems but also with a greater likelihood of not behaving in line with the expected social and organisational norms.

"The greater the intensity of bullying and the more the exposure to different types of bullying, the higher the likelihood of engaging in counterproductive workplace behaviour. Furthermore, the results show that health-related symptoms are not always associated with experiences of bullying. Indeed, while those experiencing limited work-related bullying did not report health problems, those who were not bullied but misbehaved did."

The authors say the importance of emotions needs to be considered in HR and management intervention policies. "Despite the evidence recognising the relevance of emotions when dealing with workplace aggression, this is rarely incorporated into guidelines," said Dr Fida. "In addition, it is essential to also promote behavioural regulation strategies to reduce moral disengagement, as well as negative compensating behaviour, such as drinking more alcohol and taking more risks. Its role in allowing 'otherwise good' people to freely engage in conduct they would generally consider wrong is further confirmed in this study."

The researchers asked 1019 Italian employees about their experiences of workplace bullying, counterproductive behaviour and health symptoms. They were also asked about their coping strategies, negative emotions experienced at work and moral disengagement.

Five groups were identified, one of which includes victims who are the target of work-related bullying and frequently exposed to personal-related bullying, who experience high health problems and misbehaviour (4.4% of the sample).

Another group experience work-related bullying but less frequent personal-related bullying, and show lower health problems and misbehaviour (9.6%). Although they generally use problem-solving strategies, they tend to be overwhelmed by the negative emotions they experience and are not able to control them. They also have a tendency to morally disengage.

A third group have limited exposure to work-related bullying and no exposure to personal-related bullying (22.3%). While not experiencing health-related problems they sometimes engage in counterproductive work behaviour.

A fourth group includes those who are not bullied, but have high health-related symptoms and some misbehaviour (23.9%). The last group identified are not exposed to any bullying, have no health symptoms or behavioral problems (39.9%).

Examination of the groups in relation to individual dimensions highlighted the pivotal role of negative emotions and emotional regulation, independently from exposure to workplace bullying. In more severe cases, moral disengagement and compensatory behaviour play an equally important role, suggesting the weakening of individuals' ability to regulate their behaviour.

Regular crosswords and number puzzles linked to sharper brain in later life

Older adults who regularly take part in word and number puzzles have sharper brains, according to the largest online study to date.

The more regularly adults aged 50 and over played puzzles such as crosswords and Sudoku, the better their brain function, according to research in more than 19,000 participants, led by the University of Exeter and King's College London.

The findings emerge from two linked papers published today (May 16th) in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. The researchers have previously presented their findings on word puzzles at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in 2018. The new research builds on these findings and also reports the same effect in people who regularly complete number puzzles.

Researchers asked participants in the PROTECT study, the largest online cohort in older adults, to report how frequently they engage In word and number puzzles and undertake a series of cognitive tests sensitive to measuring changes in brain function. They found that the more regularly participants engaged with the puzzles, the better they performed on tasks assessing attention, reasoning and memory.

From their results, researchers calculate that people who engage in word puzzles have brain function equivalent to ten years younger than their age, on tests assessing grammatical reasoning and eight years younger than their age on tests measuring short term memory.

Dr Anne Corbett, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the research, said: "We've found that the more regularly people engage with puzzles such as crosswords and Sudoku, the sharper their performance is across a range of tasks assessing memory, attention and reasoning. The improvements are particularly clear in the speed and accuracy of their performance. In some areas the improvement was quite dramatic -- on measures of problem-solving, people who regularly do these puzzles performed equivalent to an average of eight years younger compared to those who don't. We can't say that playing these puzzles necessarily reduces the risk of dementia in later life but this research supports previous findings that indicate regular use of word and number puzzles helps keep our brains working better for longer."

The study used participants in the PROTECT online platform, run by the University of Exeter and Kings College London. Currently, more than 22,000 healthy people aged between 50 and 96 are registered in the study, and the study is expanding into other countries including Hong Kong and the US. The online platform enables researchers to conduct and manage large-scale studies without the need for laboratory visits. PROTECT is a 25 year study with participants being followed up annually to explore how the brain ages and what might influence the risk of dementia later in life. PROTECT is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Bioresource, including through its NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN). In addition to taking part in vital research, participants in the PROTECT study have access to a brain training programme that has already been shown to benefit brain function, as well as having the opportunity to take part in exciting new research studies into brain health and dementia prevention.

Clive Ballard, Professor of Age-Related Diseases at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "PROTECT is proving to be one of the most exciting research initiatives of this decade, allowing us to understand more about how the brain ages and to conduct cutting-edge new studies into how we can reduce the risk of dementia in people across the UK. If you're aged 50 or over, you could sign up to take part in research that will help us all maintain healthy brains as we age."

PROTECT receives funding from the Wellcome Trust, the JP Moulton Foundation, and Alzheimer's Society. Partners include South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust and Devon Partnership Trust.

Flexibility of working memory from random connections

Neurons illustration.

A new article in Neuron from Princeton University neuroscientists Flora Bouchacourt and Tim Buschman presents a new model of working memory.

Working memory is your ability to hold things 'in mind.' It acts as a workspace in which information can be held, manipulated, and then used to guide behavior. In this way, it plays a critical role in cognition, decoupling behavior from the immediate sensory world. One of the remarkable things about working memory is its flexibility -- you can hold anything in mind.

How this flexibility is achieved has not been understood. In their new manuscript, Bouchacourt and Buschman present a new model of working memory that captures this flexibility.

The model combines a high-dimensional random network with structured sensory networks to flexibly maintain any input. The untuned nature of the connections allows the network to maintain any arbitrary input.

However, this flexibility comes at a cost: the random connections overlap, leading to interference between representations and limiting the memory capacity of the network. This matches the limited capacity of working memory in humans and suggests there is a tradeoff between flexibility and capacity in working memory.

In addition, the model captures several other behavioral and neurophysiological characteristics of working memory.

This work provides new insight into a core cognitive function in humans. Ongoing work hopes to understand how these mechanisms may be disrupted in neuropsychiatric diseases that disrupt working memory.

'Imagine...' -- our attitudes can change solely by the power of imagination

Sometimes in life there are special places that seem to stand out to us -- a school playground, perhaps an old church, or that inconspicuous street corner where you were kissed for the first time. Before the kiss you had never even noticed that corner. It's as if the special experience with that beloved person transferred positive emotion to the location. Our attitude towards these places thus suddenly changes -- they become valuable to us. But could this also happen purely by the power of imagination rather than by actual experiences? Roland Benoit and Philipp Paulus from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, together with Daniel Schacter from Harvard University, have examined this question in a study published in the journal Nature Communications. They show that our attitudes can be influenced not only by what we actually experience but also by what we imagine. Furthermore, they believe the phenomenon is based on activity in a particular location in the front of our brains, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Participants in their study were first asked to name people that they like very much and also people they don't like at all. In addition, they were asked to provide a list of places that they considered to be neutral. Later, when the participants were lying in the MRI scanner, they were asked to vividly imagine how they would spend time with a much-liked person at one of the neutral places. "So I might imagine myself with my daughter in the elevator of our institute, where she wildly pushes all the buttons. Eventually, we arrive at the roof top terrace, where we get out to enjoy the view," describes first author Roland Benoit, who heads the research group 'Adaptive Memory'.

After the MRI scanning, he and his colleagues were able to determine that the attitudes of the participants towards the places had changed: the previously neutral places that had been imagined with liked people were now regarded more positive than at the beginning of the study. The authors first observed this effect with study participants in Cambridge, MA, and then successfully replicated this effect in Leipzig, Germany. "Merely imagining interacting with a much-liked person at a neutral place can transfer the emotional value of the person to this place. And we don't even have to actually experience the episode in reality," is how co-author Daniel Schacter sums it up.

Using MRI data, the researchers were able to show how this mechanism works in the brain. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex plays an important role in this process. This is where information about individual persons and places from our environment is stored, as the authors assumed. But this region also evaluates how important individual people and places are for us. "We propose that this region bundles together representations of our environment by binding together information from the entire brain that form an overall picture," Roland Benoit explains.

"For example, there would be a representation with information about my daughter -- what she looks like, how her voice sounds, how she reacts in certain situations. The idea now is that these representations also include an evaluation -- for example, how important my daughter is to me and how much I love her."

Indeed, when the participants thought of a person that they liked more strongly, the scientists saw signs of greater activity in that region. "Now, when I imagine my daughter in the elevator, both her representation and that of the elevator become active in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This, in turn, can connect these representations -- the positive value of the person can thus transfer to the previously neutral location."

Why are the researchers interested in this phenomenon? They want to better understand the human ability to experience hypothetical events through imagination and how we learn from imagined events much in the same way as from actual experiences. This mechanism can potentially augment future-oriented decisions and also help avoiding risks. According to Benoit, it will be important to also understand the consequences of negative thoughts: "In our study, we show how positive imaginings can lead to a more positive evaluation of our environment. I wonder how this mechanism influences people who tend to dwell on negative thoughts about their future, such as people who suffer from depression. Does such rumination lead to a devaluation of aspects of their life that are actually neutral or even positive?" This could be the next interesting research question for his team.

People recycle more when they know what recyclable waste becomes

Researchers from Penn State University and Boston College published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing, which finds that helping consumers think about how recyclables become new products inspires consumers to recycle more.

The study forthcoming in the July issue of the Journal of Marketingtitled "Knowing What it Makes: How Product Transformation Salience Increases Recycling" is authored by Karen Page Winterich, Gergana Y. Nenkov, and Gabriel E. Gonzales.

Around the world, sustainability programs are fast becoming a staple of the private sector. However, consumers' recycling habits have not kept pace. In fact, only 25.8% of waste was recycled in the United States and only 13% of municipal solid waste was recycled globally in 2015.

The research team conducted six studies to test how promoting recyclable waste will be transformed into new products (product transformation salience) can increase recycling rates.

In the first study, participants were asked to dispose of some scratch paper. Participants who saw a recycling message involving recycled material being transformed into the same product -- paper (80.5%), or a different product, a guitar (79.1%) -- recycled more than participants who saw a generic recycling message not involving product transformation (50.9%).

The second study showed that participants who viewed advertisements for products made from identified recycled plastic items were more likely to recycle (87.7%) than those who viewed advertisements for products that only mention the company engages in recycling practices (71.7%).

The third study compared three messages to confirm that transformation salience increases recycling even when no specific product output is identified from the transformation (i.e., simply telling consumers that recycling gives recyclables a new life). The research team found that transformation messaging increases recycling by inspiring people to recycle -- in other words, getting people to think about the possibilities from transformation is the key to increased recycling rates.

The final three studies were conducted in the field. In the first study, a Google Ads campaign for a jeans recycling program generated a click-through rate of 0.26% for a product transformation recycling advertisement versus 0.18% for a recycling advertisement not emphasizing product transformation. In the next study, conducted before a university football game, tailgating fans recycled 58.1% of their waste after being told what products could be made from recyclables, whereas those receiving a traditional recycling message about what could be recycled only recycled 19% of their waste. Finally, the team did an audit of two university residence hall waste collection stations. On the product transformation salience floor, when the signage included products made from recyclables, 51.5% of the material headed to the landfill could have been recycled, whereas 62.9% of the material in the control floor's landfill bin was recyclable, suggesting that the transformation message led students to place more of their recyclable material in recycling bins instead of the landfill bin.

"This research has important implications for companies and organizations seeking to increase recycling rates. These studies provide compelling evidence that when consumers consider that recyclables are transformed into something new, they recycle more," said Winterich. "Increasing transformation salience among consumers should be a priority for any organization seeking to increase collection rates. Increased recycling offers not only societal and environmental benefits, but also provides the source materials companies need for sustainable production of goods in a circular economy."

These four values lessen the power of transformational leadership

Transformational leadership is considered one of the most effective ways to motivate and inspire employees. However, new research finds cultural values significantly limit its effectiveness.

Marcus Credé, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University, says the leadership model earned a reputation as the gold standard because it provides clear guidelines for managers to follow, and studies have shown it improves employee performance. The four core components of transformational leadership (see below) are widely studied and taught in business schools and featured in management textbooks.

Because of its widespread acceptance and implementation, Credé and co-authors Jaehee Jong, Northern Illinois University; and Peter Harms, University of Alabama, reviewed nearly 200 studies of more than 57,000 employees from 34 countries to determine if culture plays a role. Their meta-analysis, published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology, found it does. Transformational leadership was not as effective in cultures:

• High on gender egalitarianism and humane orientation. Individuals feel men and women should be treated equally, and they encourage humane behavior such as generosity, fairness and kindness.
• Low on future orientation. Individuals are less likely to delay gratification, plan and invest in the future.
• Low on uncertainty avoidance. Individuals are more comfortable with uncertainty and change, and do not rely heavily on rules or policies to reduce the uncertainty of future events.

"In most western countries, transformational leadership simply doesn't have a strong relationship with how employees behave and function," Credé said. "This includes the U.S., but especially Western and Northern Europe. There the relationship is almost zero."

Distorted view

Transformational leadership is not ineffective across all cultures. In fact, the meta-analysis found a strong relationship in developing countries. Credé says up to this point, much of our understanding of transformational leadership has been based on studies focusing solely on employee feedback and measured only a single point in time, providing an incomplete picture of its effectiveness.

"We may have gotten a distorted sense of how much this leadership style matters, simply because a lot of the work took a shortcut approach to doing the research," Credé said. "As a result, it overestimated the importance of transformational leadership."

In the paper, Credé and his colleagues outlined other factors that may explain the cultural differences. For example, if most leaders generally follow the principles of transformational leadership, any one leader will not stand out and have little impact on employees as a result. Just the opposite may be true in some developing countries -- the effects may be magnified because such leadership is so rare.

"It's also possible that organizations in American and Western European countries are so effective at all the things that produce high functioning employees -- training, selection, performance management -- that being an effective leader doesn't add much to making employees highly effective," Credé said.

Four components of transformational leadership

• Idealized influence: The leader is a role model and behaves the way he/she wants employees to behave.
• Inspirational motivation: The leader presents a vision for the future of the organization to inspire employees.
• Individualized consideration: The leader develops one-on-one relationships to help employees reach their potential.
• Intellectual stimulation: The leader encourages employees to be creative and challenges them to go above and beyond.

Current vaccination policies may not be enough to prevent measles resurgence

Current vaccination policies may not be sufficient to achieve and maintain measles elimination and prevent future resurgence in Australia, Ireland, Italy, the UK and the US, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Medicine.

To successfully achieve and maintain measles elimination in these countries in the medium to long term, further country-specific immunisation efforts may be needed in addition to current strategies. Measles elimination has been defined as the absence of endemic measles transmission in a region or other defined geographic area for twelve months or longer.

A team of researchers at the Bruno Kessler Foundation and Bocconi University, Italy used a computer model to simulate the evolution of measles immunity between 2018 and 2050 in seven countries; Australia, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and the US. The authors focused their analysis on countries with a routine two-dose measles vaccination programme and a high primary school involvement rate, but with different demographics and vaccination histories. The aim was to evaluate the effect of possible adjustments to existing immunisation strategies, and to estimate the proportion of people who may remain susceptible to measles in high-income countries over time.

The authors' projections up until 2050 suggest that if current vaccination policies remain unchanged, the proportion of the population susceptible to measles would only remain below 7.5% in Singapore and South Korea, two countries which had high vaccination coverage in the past. Previous research estimated that the proportion of the population that does not have immunity (maximum susceptibility) needs to be 7.5% or less for measles to be eliminated.

In 2018, the proportion of the population susceptible to measles infection in the countries under study ranged from 3.7% in the UK to 9.3% in Italy (the only country where the proportion was found to be higher than 7.5%). In Australia, Ireland, the UK and the US, vaccination from routine programmes would need to continuously cover more than 95% of the population to keep the proportion of susceptible individuals below 7.5% until 2050.

Dr. Filippo Trentini, the first author said: "In recent years, we've witnessed a resurgence of measles cases even in countries where, according to World Health Organisation guidelines, elimination should already have been achieved. This resurgence is due to suboptimal vaccination coverage levels. In Italy, where measles incidents rates were among the highest, the government has made measles vaccination compulsory for children before they enter primary school. We investigated the potential of this and other policies to reinforce immunisation rates in seven high-income countries."

Co-author Dr. Stefano Merler added: "Our results suggest that most of the countries we have studied would strongly benefit from the introduction of compulsory vaccination at school entry in addition to current immunisation programmes. In particular, we found that this strategy would allow the UK, Ireland and the US to reach stable herd immunity levels in the next decades, which means that a sufficiently high proportion of individuals are immune to the disease to avoid future outbreaks. To be effective, mandatory vaccination at school entry would need to cover more than 40% of the population."

In Italy, the fraction of susceptible individuals by 2050 is projected to be 10%, even if coverage for routine vaccination reaches 100%, and additional vaccination strategies targeting both children at school entry and adults may be needed to achieve elimination.

Economists find net benefit in soda tax

A team of economists has concluded that soda taxes serve as a "net good," an assessment based on an analysis of health benefits and consumer behavior. The work, which sees advantages similar to those of long-standing cigarette taxes, also offers policy parameters that it views as more effective than many existing soda taxes.

The analysis, by researchers at New York University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, Berkeley, was released today as a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper.

"The research is clear that sugary drinks are bad for our health," observe NYU's Hunt Allcott, Wharton's Benjamin Lockwood, and UC Berkeley's Dmitry Taubinsky, the papers' authors. "Our study takes a next step to evaluate the overall economic rationale as to whether we should impose a tax. Using an economic framework, we show that taxing soda generates net benefits to society -- taking into account the health effects, the enjoyment that people get from drinking the drinks they enjoy, the value of the tax revenues, and other factors."

The research estimates that a nationwide soda tax would yield $7 billion in net benefits to society each year.

The research also considers concerns about regressivity.

"We estimate that soda taxes benefit both low- and high-income people," the researchers say. "While low-income people drink more sugary drinks and thus pay more in soda taxes, their health also benefits more from drinking less."

The researchers also find that state-level taxes would be even more effective than city-level taxes, such as those implemented in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and other U.S. cities.

"Soda taxes would yield more benefit at the state level than they would at the city level, both because they cover more people and because buying tax-free soda just outside the city, which some people do, dilutes the benefits of a tax," the authors observe.

Arizona, California, Michigan, and Washington have passed legislation or referenda banning their cities from adopting new soda taxes. The papers' findings suggest that these bans are not economically justified.

Their conclusions on the societal benefits of soda taxes are based on the following:

• Much like the cars emitting pollution that harms others, sugary drinks are linked to diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, resulting in medical bills ultimately paid by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid, or by private insurers. The researchers estimate that, on average, drinking a 12-ounce can of Coke will impose about 10 cents of health care costs on others.
• Fifty-three percent of Americans who consume sugary drinks say they do so "more often than I should," according to a previous survey, which suggests that soda taxes help people reduce consumption toward the level they want for themselves. In addition, people with high nutrition knowledge drink many fewer sugary drinks, indicating that soda taxes help people reduce consumption toward the level they would choose for themselves if they were fully informed about the health impacts.
• Previous studies have shown that low-income people bear the brunt of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease -- afflictions linked to consumption of sugary drinks -- so they would likely benefit the most from drinking fewer of these beverages. Furthermore, low-income people have lower nutrition knowledge and are more likely to report drinking soda "more often than I should."

The work also offers guidelines for making existing soda taxes more effective while acknowledging finding an optimal tax level requires additional study:

• Noting that it's the sugar, not the water, that is unhealthy, the researchers say that taxes should scale with the amount of sugar in a drink, not the volume of liquid. They calculate that the net benefits would be much larger at a tax rate of 0.5 cents per gram of sugar than at the standard 1 cent per ounce of liquid.
  • Implementing taxes at the state or national level, instead of the current smattering of city-level taxes, would be more beneficial as it would diminish "cross-border shopping."
  • The existing tax in Philadelphia includes diet drinks, even though the health harms from diet drinks are not clearly established, posing a financial burden while not offering a robust health benefit. "Soda taxes should be limited to sugary drinks, where the health evidence is more clear," the economists argue.
  • The analysis shows that the standard 1-cent-per-ounce tax rate might be too low for a state-level tax to yield health and economic benefits and might be too high for a city-level tax in places with substantial cross-border shopping. "Because these estimates involve a number of assumptions, we need more research on this issue," the researchers write.

The studies, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will appear later this year in the peer-reviewed Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Hunt Allcott is an associate professor of economics at New York University and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Benjamin B. Lockwood is an assistant professor of economics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dmitry Taubinsky is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.