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[title] => Too much free time may be almost as bad as too little – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/too-much-free-time-may-be-almost-as-bad-as-too-little-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Fri, 10 Sep 2021 03:21:55 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/too-much-free-time-may-be-almost-as-bad-as-too-little-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Marissa A. Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, Hal E. Hershfield. Having too little or too...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Marissa A. Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, Hal E. Hershfield. Having too little or too much time is linked to lower subjective well-being.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2021; DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000391
“People often complain about being too busy and express wanting more time. But is more time actually linked to greater happiness? We found that having a dearth of discretionary hours in one’s day results in greater stress and lower subjective well-being,” said Marissa Sharif, PhD, an assistant professor of marketing at The Wharton School and lead author of the paper. “However, while too little time is bad, having more time is not always better.”
The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Researchers analyzed the data from 21,736 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey between 2012 and 2013. Participants provided a detailed account of what they did during the prior 24 hours — indicating the time of day and duration of each activity — and reported their sense of well-being. The researchers found that as free time increased, so did well-being, but it leveled off at about two hours and began to decline after five. Correlations in both directions were statistically significant.
The researchers also analyzed data from 13,639 working Americans who participated in the National Study of the Changing Workforce between 1992 and 2008. Among the survey’s many questions, participants were asked about their amount of discretionary time (e.g., “On average, on days when you’re working, about how many hours [minutes] do you spend on your own free-time activities?”) and their subjective well-being, which was measured as life satisfaction (e.g., “All things considered, how do you feel about your life these days? Would you say you feel 1=very satisfied, 2=somewhat satisfied, 3=somewhat dissatisfied, or 4=very dissatisfied?”)
Once again, the researchers found that higher levels of free time were significantly associated with higher levels of well-being, but only up to a point. After that, excess free time was not associated with greater well-being.
To further investigate the phenomenon, the researchers conducted two online experiments involving more than 6,000 participants. In the first experiment, participants were asked to imagine having a given amount of discretionary time every day for at least six months. Participants were randomly assigned to have a low (15 minutes per day), moderate (3.5 hours per day), or high (7 hours per day) amount of discretionary time. Participants were asked to report the extent to which they would experience enjoyment, happiness and satisfaction.
Participants in both the low and high discretionary time groups reported lower well-being than the moderate discretionary time group. The researchers found that those with low discretionary time felt more stressed than those with a moderate amount, contributing to lower well-being, but those with high levels of free time felt less productive than those in the moderate group, leading them to also have lower well-being.
In the second experiment, researchers looked at the potential role of productivity. Participants were asked to imagine having either a moderate (3.5 hours) or high (7 hours) amount of free time per day, but were also asked to imagine spending that time in either productive (e.g., working out, hobbies or running) or unproductive activities (e.g., watching television or using the computer). The researchers found participants with more free time reported lower levels of well-being when engaging in unproductive activities. However, when engaging in productive activities, those with more free time felt similar to those with a moderate amount of free time.
“Though our investigation centered on the relationship between amount of discretionary time and subjective well-being, our additional exploration into how individuals spend their discretionary time proved revealing,” said Sharif. “Our findings suggest that ending up with entire days free to fill at one’s discretion may leave one similarly unhappy. People should instead strive for having a moderate amount of free time to spend how they want. In cases when people do find themselves with excessive amounts of discretionary time, such as retirement or having left a job, our results suggest these individuals would benefit from spending their newfound time with purpose.”
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Marissa A. Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, Hal E. Hershfield. Having too little or too...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Marissa A. Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, Hal E. Hershfield. Having too little or too much time is linked to lower subjective well-being.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2021; DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000391
“People often complain about being too busy and express wanting more time. But is more time actually linked to greater happiness? We found that having a dearth of discretionary hours in one’s day results in greater stress and lower subjective well-being,” said Marissa Sharif, PhD, an assistant professor of marketing at The Wharton School and lead author of the paper. “However, while too little time is bad, having more time is not always better.”
The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Researchers analyzed the data from 21,736 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey between 2012 and 2013. Participants provided a detailed account of what they did during the prior 24 hours — indicating the time of day and duration of each activity — and reported their sense of well-being. The researchers found that as free time increased, so did well-being, but it leveled off at about two hours and began to decline after five. Correlations in both directions were statistically significant.
The researchers also analyzed data from 13,639 working Americans who participated in the National Study of the Changing Workforce between 1992 and 2008. Among the survey’s many questions, participants were asked about their amount of discretionary time (e.g., “On average, on days when you’re working, about how many hours [minutes] do you spend on your own free-time activities?”) and their subjective well-being, which was measured as life satisfaction (e.g., “All things considered, how do you feel about your life these days? Would you say you feel 1=very satisfied, 2=somewhat satisfied, 3=somewhat dissatisfied, or 4=very dissatisfied?”)
Once again, the researchers found that higher levels of free time were significantly associated with higher levels of well-being, but only up to a point. After that, excess free time was not associated with greater well-being.
To further investigate the phenomenon, the researchers conducted two online experiments involving more than 6,000 participants. In the first experiment, participants were asked to imagine having a given amount of discretionary time every day for at least six months. Participants were randomly assigned to have a low (15 minutes per day), moderate (3.5 hours per day), or high (7 hours per day) amount of discretionary time. Participants were asked to report the extent to which they would experience enjoyment, happiness and satisfaction.
Participants in both the low and high discretionary time groups reported lower well-being than the moderate discretionary time group. The researchers found that those with low discretionary time felt more stressed than those with a moderate amount, contributing to lower well-being, but those with high levels of free time felt less productive than those in the moderate group, leading them to also have lower well-being.
In the second experiment, researchers looked at the potential role of productivity. Participants were asked to imagine having either a moderate (3.5 hours) or high (7 hours) amount of free time per day, but were also asked to imagine spending that time in either productive (e.g., working out, hobbies or running) or unproductive activities (e.g., watching television or using the computer). The researchers found participants with more free time reported lower levels of well-being when engaging in unproductive activities. However, when engaging in productive activities, those with more free time felt similar to those with a moderate amount of free time.
“Though our investigation centered on the relationship between amount of discretionary time and subjective well-being, our additional exploration into how individuals spend their discretionary time proved revealing,” said Sharif. “Our findings suggest that ending up with entire days free to fill at one’s discretion may leave one similarly unhappy. People should instead strive for having a moderate amount of free time to spend how they want. In cases when people do find themselves with excessive amounts of discretionary time, such as retirement or having left a job, our results suggest these individuals would benefit from spending their newfound time with purpose.”
[date_timestamp] => 1631244115
)
[1] => Array
(
[title] => After 20 years of attempting, scientists succeed in doping a 1D chain of cuprates – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/after-20-years-of-attempting-scientists-succeed-in-doping-a-1d-chain-of-cuprates-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Fri, 10 Sep 2021 02:19:48 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/after-20-years-of-attempting-scientists-succeed-in-doping-a-1d-chain-of-cuprates-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Zhuoyu Chen, Yao Wang, Slavko N. Rebec, Tao Jia, Makoto Hashimoto, Donghui Lu,...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Zhuoyu Chen, Yao Wang, Slavko N. Rebec, Tao Jia, Makoto Hashimoto, Donghui Lu, Brian Moritz, Robert G. Moore, Thomas P. Devereaux, Zhi-Xun Shen. Anomalously strong near-neighbor attraction in doped 1D cuprate chains. Science, 2021; 373 (6560): 1235 DOI: 10.1126/science.abf5174
Researchers know these quantum materials get their abilities from electrons that join forces to form a sort of electron soup. But modeling this process in all its complexity would take far more time and computing power than anyone can imagine having today. So for understanding one key class of unconventional superconductors — copper oxides, or cuprates — researchers created, for simplicity, a theoretical model in which the material exists in just one dimension, as a string of atoms. They made these one-dimensional cuprates in the lab and found that their behavior agreed with the theory pretty well.
Unfortunately, these 1D atomic chains lacked one thing: They could not be doped, a process where some atoms are replaced by others to change the number of electrons that are free to move around. Doping is one of several factors scientists can adjust to tweak the behavior of materials like these, and it’s a critical part of getting them to superconduct.
Now a study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford and Clemson universities has synthesized the first 1D cuprate material that can be doped. Their analysis of the doped material suggests that the most prominent proposed model of how cuprates achieve superconductivity is missing a key ingredient: an unexpectedly strong attraction between neighboring electrons in the material’s atomic structure, or lattice. That attraction, they said, may be the result of interactions with natural lattice vibrations.
The team reported their findings today in Science.
“The inability to controllably dope one-dimensional cuprate systems has been a significant barrier to understanding these materials for more than two decades,” said Zhi-Xun Shen, a Stanford professor and investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC.
“Now that we’ve done it,” he said, “our experiments show that our current model misses a very important phenomenon that’s present in the real material.”
Zhuoyu Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in Shen’s lab who led the experimental part of the study, said the research was made possible by a system the team developed for making 1D chains embedded in a 3D material and moving them directly into a chamber at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) for analysis with a powerful X-ray beam.
“It’s a unique setup,” he said, “and indispensable for achieving the high-quality data we needed to see these very subtle effects.”
From grids to chains, in theory
The predominant model used to simulate these complex materials is known as the Hubbard model. In its 2D version, it is based on a flat, evenly spaced grid of the simplest possible atoms.
But this basic 2D grid is already too complicated for today’s computers and algorithms to handle, said Thomas Devereaux, a SLAC and Stanford professor and SIMES investigator who supervised the theoretical part of this work. There’s no well-accepted way to make sure the model’s calculations for the material’s physical properties are correct, so if they don’t match experimental results it’s impossible to tell whether the calculations or the theoretical model went wrong.
To solve that problem, scientists have applied the Hubbard model to 1D chains of the simplest possible cuprate lattice — a string of copper and oxygen atoms. This 1D version of the model can accurately calculate and capture the collective behavior of electrons in materials made of undoped 1D chains. But until now, there hasn’t been a way to test the accuracy of its predictions for the doped versions of the chains because no one was able to make them in the lab, despite more than two decades of trying.
“Our major achievement was in synthesizing these doped chains,” Chen said. “We were able to dope them over a very wide range and get systematic data to pin down what we were observing.”
One atomic layer at a time
To make the doped 1D chains, Chen and his colleagues sprayed a film of a cuprate material known as barium strontium copper oxide (BSCO), just a few atomic layers thick, onto a supportive surface inside a sealed chamber at the specially designed SSRL beamline. The shape of the lattices in the film and on the surface lined up in a way that created 1D chains of copper and oxygen embedded in the 3D BSCO material.
They doped the chains by exposing them to ozone and heat, which added oxygen atoms to their atomic lattices, Chen said. Each oxygen atom pulled an electron out of the chain, and those freed-up electrons become more mobile. When millions of these free-flowing electrons come together, they can create the collective state that’s the basis of superconductivity.
Next the researchers shuttled their chains into another part of the beamline for analysis with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, or ARPES. This technique ejected electrons from the chains and measured their direction and energy, giving scientists a detailed and sensitive picture of how the electrons in the material behave.
Surprisingly strong attractions
Their analysis showed that in the doped 1D material, the electrons’ attraction to their counterparts in neighboring lattice sites is 10 times stronger than the Hubbard model predicts, said Yao Wang, an assistant professor at Clemson University who worked on the theory side of the study.
The research team suggested that this high level of “nearest-neighbor” attraction may stem from interactions with phonons — natural vibrations that jiggle the atomic latticework. Phonons are known to play a role in conventional superconductivity, and there are indications that they could also be involved in a different way in unconventional superconductivity that occurs at much warmer temperatures in materials like the cuprates, although that has not been definitively proven.
The scientists said it’s likely that this strong nearest-neighbor attraction between electrons exists in all the cuprates and could help in understanding superconductivity in the 2D versions of the Hubbard model and its kin, giving scientists a more complete picture of these puzzling materials.
Researchers from DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory contributed to this work, which was funded by the DOE Office of Science. SSRL is an Office of Science user facility.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Zhuoyu Chen, Yao Wang, Slavko N. Rebec, Tao Jia, Makoto Hashimoto, Donghui Lu,...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Zhuoyu Chen, Yao Wang, Slavko N. Rebec, Tao Jia, Makoto Hashimoto, Donghui Lu, Brian Moritz, Robert G. Moore, Thomas P. Devereaux, Zhi-Xun Shen. Anomalously strong near-neighbor attraction in doped 1D cuprate chains. Science, 2021; 373 (6560): 1235 DOI: 10.1126/science.abf5174
Researchers know these quantum materials get their abilities from electrons that join forces to form a sort of electron soup. But modeling this process in all its complexity would take far more time and computing power than anyone can imagine having today. So for understanding one key class of unconventional superconductors — copper oxides, or cuprates — researchers created, for simplicity, a theoretical model in which the material exists in just one dimension, as a string of atoms. They made these one-dimensional cuprates in the lab and found that their behavior agreed with the theory pretty well.
Unfortunately, these 1D atomic chains lacked one thing: They could not be doped, a process where some atoms are replaced by others to change the number of electrons that are free to move around. Doping is one of several factors scientists can adjust to tweak the behavior of materials like these, and it’s a critical part of getting them to superconduct.
Now a study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford and Clemson universities has synthesized the first 1D cuprate material that can be doped. Their analysis of the doped material suggests that the most prominent proposed model of how cuprates achieve superconductivity is missing a key ingredient: an unexpectedly strong attraction between neighboring electrons in the material’s atomic structure, or lattice. That attraction, they said, may be the result of interactions with natural lattice vibrations.
The team reported their findings today in Science.
“The inability to controllably dope one-dimensional cuprate systems has been a significant barrier to understanding these materials for more than two decades,” said Zhi-Xun Shen, a Stanford professor and investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC.
“Now that we’ve done it,” he said, “our experiments show that our current model misses a very important phenomenon that’s present in the real material.”
Zhuoyu Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in Shen’s lab who led the experimental part of the study, said the research was made possible by a system the team developed for making 1D chains embedded in a 3D material and moving them directly into a chamber at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) for analysis with a powerful X-ray beam.
“It’s a unique setup,” he said, “and indispensable for achieving the high-quality data we needed to see these very subtle effects.”
From grids to chains, in theory
The predominant model used to simulate these complex materials is known as the Hubbard model. In its 2D version, it is based on a flat, evenly spaced grid of the simplest possible atoms.
But this basic 2D grid is already too complicated for today’s computers and algorithms to handle, said Thomas Devereaux, a SLAC and Stanford professor and SIMES investigator who supervised the theoretical part of this work. There’s no well-accepted way to make sure the model’s calculations for the material’s physical properties are correct, so if they don’t match experimental results it’s impossible to tell whether the calculations or the theoretical model went wrong.
To solve that problem, scientists have applied the Hubbard model to 1D chains of the simplest possible cuprate lattice — a string of copper and oxygen atoms. This 1D version of the model can accurately calculate and capture the collective behavior of electrons in materials made of undoped 1D chains. But until now, there hasn’t been a way to test the accuracy of its predictions for the doped versions of the chains because no one was able to make them in the lab, despite more than two decades of trying.
“Our major achievement was in synthesizing these doped chains,” Chen said. “We were able to dope them over a very wide range and get systematic data to pin down what we were observing.”
One atomic layer at a time
To make the doped 1D chains, Chen and his colleagues sprayed a film of a cuprate material known as barium strontium copper oxide (BSCO), just a few atomic layers thick, onto a supportive surface inside a sealed chamber at the specially designed SSRL beamline. The shape of the lattices in the film and on the surface lined up in a way that created 1D chains of copper and oxygen embedded in the 3D BSCO material.
They doped the chains by exposing them to ozone and heat, which added oxygen atoms to their atomic lattices, Chen said. Each oxygen atom pulled an electron out of the chain, and those freed-up electrons become more mobile. When millions of these free-flowing electrons come together, they can create the collective state that’s the basis of superconductivity.
Next the researchers shuttled their chains into another part of the beamline for analysis with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, or ARPES. This technique ejected electrons from the chains and measured their direction and energy, giving scientists a detailed and sensitive picture of how the electrons in the material behave.
Surprisingly strong attractions
Their analysis showed that in the doped 1D material, the electrons’ attraction to their counterparts in neighboring lattice sites is 10 times stronger than the Hubbard model predicts, said Yao Wang, an assistant professor at Clemson University who worked on the theory side of the study.
The research team suggested that this high level of “nearest-neighbor” attraction may stem from interactions with phonons — natural vibrations that jiggle the atomic latticework. Phonons are known to play a role in conventional superconductivity, and there are indications that they could also be involved in a different way in unconventional superconductivity that occurs at much warmer temperatures in materials like the cuprates, although that has not been definitively proven.
The scientists said it’s likely that this strong nearest-neighbor attraction between electrons exists in all the cuprates and could help in understanding superconductivity in the 2D versions of the Hubbard model and its kin, giving scientists a more complete picture of these puzzling materials.
Researchers from DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory contributed to this work, which was funded by the DOE Office of Science. SSRL is an Office of Science user facility.
[date_timestamp] => 1631240388
)
[2] => Array
(
[title] => Think bad news before it’s delivered, new research suggests – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/think-bad-news-before-its-delivered-new-research-suggests-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:15:52 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/10/think-bad-news-before-its-delivered-new-research-suggests-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Kyla Rankin, Kate Sweeny. Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Kyla Rankin, Kate Sweeny. Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences of Preemptive Benefit Finding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2021; 014616722110378 DOI: 10.1177/01461672211037863
You didn’t get the job? Just as well: That new boss seemed edgy during the interview. Someone outbid you at the last second for that antique something-or-other on eBay? You didn’t really have the money to spend anyway.
Those coping strategies result in less depression, and greater life satisfaction and self-esteem. Finding silver linings can even mean better physical health.
But there has been little consideration of whether there’s a benefit to looking for those upsides in bad news before the news arrives. That’s the thrust of new research results from the lab of UCR psychology researcher Kate Sweeny: Does it help to find a silver lining preemptively?
“Must the process of identifying silver linings wait until bad news arrives?” the researchers wrote.
“It is possible that asking people to write about silver linings prior to a potentially distressing event shields them from the emotional suffering — or at least boosts concurrent positive emotions,” the researchers continued in the article, which is now online in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
For the research, Sweeny and a former graduate student in her lab, Kyla Rankin, conducted four studies. The studies variously looked at preemptive benefit finding in law graduates awaiting bar exam results; voters approaching the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 midterm elections, respectively, and undergraduates awaiting the results of a health risk assessment.
In the first study, 150 California law students were recruited, most of whom were taking the bar exam for the first time, and 68% of whom ultimately passed. They filled out questionnaires before the exam, after it, and on the day results were posted.
For study two, researchers polled 375 supporters of Donald Trump, and 373 supporters of Hillary Clinton via the Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, an online survey mechanism. They were asked to gauge the degree to which they agreed with the following statement: “I have been trying to focus on good things that might come if my preferred presidential candidate does not get elected.”
As an aside — it wasn’t a focus of the research — the study found Trump supporters engaged in more preemptive benefit finding than Clinton supporters.
Because Trump won the election, the researchers focused their “post” assessment on the disappointed Clinton supporters.
The third study assessed 428 voters across the political spectrum about the 2018 midterm election, again using the MTurk utility. An ancillary result was that the study again found Republican voters took part in more preemptive benefit finding.
In study four, 293 undergraduate students were told their risk of environmental toxin exposure would be measured. Researchers sought to introduce anxiety by including questions participants were likely to say yes to, such as whether they have stored food in plastic containers. Some in the group were then asked to consider positive outcomes from an assessment that their toxin exposure was high. After a period waiting for results, participants were randomly told they were at low or high risk for toxin exposure, after which their reaction was recorded.
Across all four studies, researchers found those who engaged in more preemptive benefit finding were more content during their waiting periods and experienced less negative emotion after the waiting ended.
Also, the researchers said, focusing on a possibly bad outcome doesn’t rob one’s joy if the news turns out to be good.
“How can people maximize emotional well-being when things go wrong?” the researchers asked. “One way may be to shift focus from the dark cloud to the silver lining, even when waiting.”
The article, “Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences of Preemptive Benefit Finding,” was authored by Rankin and Sweeny and is now online. The research was funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Kyla Rankin, Kate Sweeny. Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Kyla Rankin, Kate Sweeny. Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences of Preemptive Benefit Finding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2021; 014616722110378 DOI: 10.1177/01461672211037863
You didn’t get the job? Just as well: That new boss seemed edgy during the interview. Someone outbid you at the last second for that antique something-or-other on eBay? You didn’t really have the money to spend anyway.
Those coping strategies result in less depression, and greater life satisfaction and self-esteem. Finding silver linings can even mean better physical health.
But there has been little consideration of whether there’s a benefit to looking for those upsides in bad news before the news arrives. That’s the thrust of new research results from the lab of UCR psychology researcher Kate Sweeny: Does it help to find a silver lining preemptively?
“Must the process of identifying silver linings wait until bad news arrives?” the researchers wrote.
“It is possible that asking people to write about silver linings prior to a potentially distressing event shields them from the emotional suffering — or at least boosts concurrent positive emotions,” the researchers continued in the article, which is now online in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
For the research, Sweeny and a former graduate student in her lab, Kyla Rankin, conducted four studies. The studies variously looked at preemptive benefit finding in law graduates awaiting bar exam results; voters approaching the results of the 2016 presidential and 2018 midterm elections, respectively, and undergraduates awaiting the results of a health risk assessment.
In the first study, 150 California law students were recruited, most of whom were taking the bar exam for the first time, and 68% of whom ultimately passed. They filled out questionnaires before the exam, after it, and on the day results were posted.
For study two, researchers polled 375 supporters of Donald Trump, and 373 supporters of Hillary Clinton via the Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, an online survey mechanism. They were asked to gauge the degree to which they agreed with the following statement: “I have been trying to focus on good things that might come if my preferred presidential candidate does not get elected.”
As an aside — it wasn’t a focus of the research — the study found Trump supporters engaged in more preemptive benefit finding than Clinton supporters.
Because Trump won the election, the researchers focused their “post” assessment on the disappointed Clinton supporters.
The third study assessed 428 voters across the political spectrum about the 2018 midterm election, again using the MTurk utility. An ancillary result was that the study again found Republican voters took part in more preemptive benefit finding.
In study four, 293 undergraduate students were told their risk of environmental toxin exposure would be measured. Researchers sought to introduce anxiety by including questions participants were likely to say yes to, such as whether they have stored food in plastic containers. Some in the group were then asked to consider positive outcomes from an assessment that their toxin exposure was high. After a period waiting for results, participants were randomly told they were at low or high risk for toxin exposure, after which their reaction was recorded.
Across all four studies, researchers found those who engaged in more preemptive benefit finding were more content during their waiting periods and experienced less negative emotion after the waiting ended.
Also, the researchers said, focusing on a possibly bad outcome doesn’t rob one’s joy if the news turns out to be good.
“How can people maximize emotional well-being when things go wrong?” the researchers asked. “One way may be to shift focus from the dark cloud to the silver lining, even when waiting.”
The article, “Preparing Silver Linings for a Cloudy Day: The Consequences of Preemptive Benefit Finding,” was authored by Rankin and Sweeny and is now online. The research was funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant.
[date_timestamp] => 1631232952
)
[3] => Array
(
[title] => Emoji are proposed as a powerful way for patients and doctors to communicate – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/09/emoji-are-proposed-as-a-powerful-way-for-patients-and-doctors-to-communicate-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Thu, 09 Sep 2021 05:43:06 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/09/emoji-are-proposed-as-a-powerful-way-for-patients-and-doctors-to-communicate-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Sebbie Lai, Jennifer Lee, Shuhan He. Emoji for the Medical CommunityChallenges and Opportunities....
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Sebbie Lai, Jennifer Lee, Shuhan He. Emoji for the Medical CommunityChallenges and Opportunities. JAMA Network, 2021 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2021.8409
“The need to listen to patients is at the core of our mission as physicians, and the use of emoji is a great opportunity to take communication to another level,” says He, who is director of growth for the MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare and a member of MGH’s Lab of Computer Science. “Emoji could be particularly important in treating children with still-developing language skills, people with disabilities that impair their ability to communicate, and the many patients who speak a different language.”
Emoji (which means “picture character”) originated in Japan over a decade ago and today an estimated five billion are used daily on Facebook and Facebook Messenger alone. While around 3,500 emoji are currently within the domain of the Unicode Consortium — the nonprofit organization that maintains text standards across computers and which must approve every emoji before it can be digitally used — only about 45 emoji can be considered relevant to medicine. The first, introduced in 2015, were the syringe and the pill. In 2017, Apple added emoji to represent people with disabilities, followed by symbols of the stethoscope, bone, tooth and microbe in 2019. He was co-creator of the anatomical heart and the lung emoji introduced globally in 2020 and is now working with co-authors Debbie Lai and Jennifer 8. Lee, who are active in the field, as well as with a wide range of medical societies and organizations to advocate for an additional 15 medically related emoji.
“It’s tempting to dismiss emoji as a millennial fad, but they possess the power of standardization, universality and familiarity, and in the hands of physicians and other health care providers could represent a new and highly effective way to communicate pictorially with patients,” says He. In emergency medical settings where time is critical, emoji could lead to a point-and-tap form of communication that could facilitate important clinical decisions, he adds. The tiny graphic symbols which now span all digital platforms — from mobile to tablet to desktop — could also have utility as annotations to hospital discharge instructions, which are often confusing if not incomprehensible to some patients.
In addition, the recent growth of telemedicine could be a rich opportunity for emoji to make medical inroads. The interactive platform is seen as particularly well suited for patients to transmit to health care providers visual information that charts the intensity of pain they have experienced over a period of days, weeks or months, and for those providers to make it part of the patient’s digital health record for ongoing treatment.
He is continuing his research to better understand how emoji could help patients and doctors communicate common symptoms — such as mobility, mood, and duration and quality of pain – that are associated with various diseases and conditions. “It’s clear that emoji have become part of the global, mainstream conversation, and that medical societies and physician committees and organizations need to take them seriously,” says He. “Which means they should be determining now which emoji would best serve the interests of their patients, building consensus around the medical accuracy of these emoji, then working to get them approved through the global standard-setting body and working through the long adaptation and implementation process.”
Co-author Jennifer 8. Lee is founder of Emojination, a grassroots group that has led successful campaigns for over 100 new emoji over the past five years. Co-author Debbie Lai is chief operating officer of the Act Now Coalition, a nonprofit that provides visualizations of data on COVID-19 and climate change.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Sebbie Lai, Jennifer Lee, Shuhan He. Emoji for the Medical CommunityChallenges and Opportunities....
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Sebbie Lai, Jennifer Lee, Shuhan He. Emoji for the Medical CommunityChallenges and Opportunities. JAMA Network, 2021 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2021.8409
“The need to listen to patients is at the core of our mission as physicians, and the use of emoji is a great opportunity to take communication to another level,” says He, who is director of growth for the MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare and a member of MGH’s Lab of Computer Science. “Emoji could be particularly important in treating children with still-developing language skills, people with disabilities that impair their ability to communicate, and the many patients who speak a different language.”
Emoji (which means “picture character”) originated in Japan over a decade ago and today an estimated five billion are used daily on Facebook and Facebook Messenger alone. While around 3,500 emoji are currently within the domain of the Unicode Consortium — the nonprofit organization that maintains text standards across computers and which must approve every emoji before it can be digitally used — only about 45 emoji can be considered relevant to medicine. The first, introduced in 2015, were the syringe and the pill. In 2017, Apple added emoji to represent people with disabilities, followed by symbols of the stethoscope, bone, tooth and microbe in 2019. He was co-creator of the anatomical heart and the lung emoji introduced globally in 2020 and is now working with co-authors Debbie Lai and Jennifer 8. Lee, who are active in the field, as well as with a wide range of medical societies and organizations to advocate for an additional 15 medically related emoji.
“It’s tempting to dismiss emoji as a millennial fad, but they possess the power of standardization, universality and familiarity, and in the hands of physicians and other health care providers could represent a new and highly effective way to communicate pictorially with patients,” says He. In emergency medical settings where time is critical, emoji could lead to a point-and-tap form of communication that could facilitate important clinical decisions, he adds. The tiny graphic symbols which now span all digital platforms — from mobile to tablet to desktop — could also have utility as annotations to hospital discharge instructions, which are often confusing if not incomprehensible to some patients.
In addition, the recent growth of telemedicine could be a rich opportunity for emoji to make medical inroads. The interactive platform is seen as particularly well suited for patients to transmit to health care providers visual information that charts the intensity of pain they have experienced over a period of days, weeks or months, and for those providers to make it part of the patient’s digital health record for ongoing treatment.
He is continuing his research to better understand how emoji could help patients and doctors communicate common symptoms — such as mobility, mood, and duration and quality of pain – that are associated with various diseases and conditions. “It’s clear that emoji have become part of the global, mainstream conversation, and that medical societies and physician committees and organizations need to take them seriously,” says He. “Which means they should be determining now which emoji would best serve the interests of their patients, building consensus around the medical accuracy of these emoji, then working to get them approved through the global standard-setting body and working through the long adaptation and implementation process.”
Co-author Jennifer 8. Lee is founder of Emojination, a grassroots group that has led successful campaigns for over 100 new emoji over the past five years. Co-author Debbie Lai is chief operating officer of the Act Now Coalition, a nonprofit that provides visualizations of data on COVID-19 and climate change.
[date_timestamp] => 1631166186
)
[4] => Array
(
[title] => New research shows a link between cell identities and childhood cancer type neuroblastoma – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/09/new-research-shows-a-link-between-cell-identities-and-childhood-cancer-type-neuroblastoma-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Thu, 09 Sep 2021 02:38:43 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/09/new-research-shows-a-link-between-cell-identities-and-childhood-cancer-type-neuroblastoma-novlink/
[description] => New research shows a link between cell identities and childhood cancer type neuroblastoma – NovLink...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
New research shows a link between cell identities and childhood cancer type neuroblastoma – NovLink
[date_timestamp] => 1631155123
)
[5] => Array
(
[title] => Surroundings affect rhythm of an individual’s stroll, according to new study – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/surroundings-affect-rhythm-of-an-individuals-stroll-according-to-new-study-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Wed, 08 Sep 2021 23:36:59 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/surroundings-affect-rhythm-of-an-individuals-stroll-according-to-new-study-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Daria Burtan, Jeremy F. Burn, Ute Leonards. Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Daria Burtan, Jeremy F. Burn, Ute Leonards. Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait kinematics between nature and urban images disappear when image types are controlled for likeability. PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (8): e0256635 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256635
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered that people who felt more at ease in urban environments had as regular stepping patterns as folk who felt relaxed walking in nature.
The findings, published in PLoS One, show that rather than being a quality exclusive to natural environments, the key factor of an environment is how comfortable people feel in it and that defines how beneficial it is for wellbeing. This means that a well-designed urban environment can be similarly beneficial for concentration and attention as natural surroundings.
Lead author Daria Burtan of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science said: “Measuring the changes of a person’s walking patterns through an environment allows us to understand their experienced comfort on a moment-to-moment basis.”
“This is an important step toward being able to objectively quantify the impact of particular architectural designs on people’s wellbeing.”
Scientists have previously shown that spending time in green spaces such as parks helps improve attention spans, concentration and wellbeing which can be shown by improvements in measured stepping patterns when walking in different environments.
Daria added: “As our cognitive faculties begin to decline in older age, the stepping patterns we make with our feet become slower and more variable, relative to when we are younger in the prime of our health. We found that the same thing happened when people walked toward images of urban and nature scenes they didn’t feel comfortable with — their stepping patterns became slower and more varied, relative to when they were looking at scenes they found comfortable and which they liked. “
“Not only does this suggest that environments in which we feel comfortable and safe, place fewer processing demands on our brains; it demonstrates how measuring the real-time dynamics of our gait provides us with a powerful new tool for informing on the cognitive impacts of architecture and urban design.”
The researchers are now looking to understand which psychological factors contribute to sensory discomfort.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Daria Burtan, Jeremy F. Burn, Ute Leonards. Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Daria Burtan, Jeremy F. Burn, Ute Leonards. Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait kinematics between nature and urban images disappear when image types are controlled for likeability. PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (8): e0256635 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256635
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered that people who felt more at ease in urban environments had as regular stepping patterns as folk who felt relaxed walking in nature.
The findings, published in PLoS One, show that rather than being a quality exclusive to natural environments, the key factor of an environment is how comfortable people feel in it and that defines how beneficial it is for wellbeing. This means that a well-designed urban environment can be similarly beneficial for concentration and attention as natural surroundings.
Lead author Daria Burtan of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science said: “Measuring the changes of a person’s walking patterns through an environment allows us to understand their experienced comfort on a moment-to-moment basis.”
“This is an important step toward being able to objectively quantify the impact of particular architectural designs on people’s wellbeing.”
Scientists have previously shown that spending time in green spaces such as parks helps improve attention spans, concentration and wellbeing which can be shown by improvements in measured stepping patterns when walking in different environments.
Daria added: “As our cognitive faculties begin to decline in older age, the stepping patterns we make with our feet become slower and more variable, relative to when we are younger in the prime of our health. We found that the same thing happened when people walked toward images of urban and nature scenes they didn’t feel comfortable with — their stepping patterns became slower and more varied, relative to when they were looking at scenes they found comfortable and which they liked. “
“Not only does this suggest that environments in which we feel comfortable and safe, place fewer processing demands on our brains; it demonstrates how measuring the real-time dynamics of our gait provides us with a powerful new tool for informing on the cognitive impacts of architecture and urban design.”
The researchers are now looking to understand which psychological factors contribute to sensory discomfort.
[date_timestamp] => 1631144219
)
[6] => Array
(
[title] => New study puts focus on early symptoms of Huntington’s disease – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/new-study-puts-focus-on-early-symptoms-of-huntingtons-disease-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Wed, 08 Sep 2021 20:32:09 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/new-study-puts-focus-on-early-symptoms-of-huntingtons-disease-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Sanaz Gabery, Jing Eugene Kwa, Rachel Y. Cheong, Barbara Baldo, Costanza Ferrari Bardile,...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Sanaz Gabery, Jing Eugene Kwa, Rachel Y. Cheong, Barbara Baldo, Costanza Ferrari Bardile, Brendan Tan, Catriona McLean, Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis, Govinda R. Poudel, Glenda Halliday, Mahmoud A. Pouladi, Åsa Petersén. Early white matter pathology in the fornix of the limbic system in Huntington disease. Acta Neuropathologica, 2021; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-021-02362-8
Huntington’s is a fatal illness with no treatment to slow its course. The new research findings provide knowledge about where the early changes take place in the brain. This is important for the development of new treatments which, according to the researchers, should target the earliest disease-related changes.
“Our results show that the emotional brain is affected at an early stage, and that this can contribute to the development of psychiatric and cognitive symptoms, which are the most difficult for the patients and their relatives. It is not only nerve cells that are affected, but also other cells, oligodendrocytes, which enable communication between different parts of the brain, that are affected early in the course of the disease,” explains Åsa Petersén, professor of neuroscience at Lunds University and senior consultant in psychiatry at the Huntington Centre in Lund.
Huntington’s disease is caused by a known genetic mutation that results in the production of a protein known as mutant huntingtin in all the cells of the body. However, only certain cells are very sensitive to the protein mutation and these are in specific areas of the brain.
“It is still a mystery why certain cells are sensitive to the protein mutation and why the disease starts to break out at a certain time, even though it was there all along. However, our study shows for the first time that changes in the oligodendrocytes in the emotional brain are expressed in the brains of individuals suffering from Huntington’s disease,” says researcher and first author of the study, Sanaz Gabery.
The researchers believe that previous research focused too much on the typical movement impairments associated with Huntington’s disease and the link to effects on the movement control centre.
“The emotional brain and cells other than just nerve cells are affected by the development of Huntington’s disease. The nerve-fibre system in the emotional brain is already reduced before the typical movement impairments emerge. The changes consist of damage to myelin, i.e. the insulation system in the white matter of the brain, which is important for information transfer, and an effect on genes that are important for oligodendrocytes’ identity and function,” explains Åsa Petersén.
“Today, many researchers are focused on reducing the levels, and thereby the effect, of the disease-inducing mutant huntingtin in the nerves cells and in the brain’s movement control centre. But our findings indicate that there is also a need to examine the white matter in the emotional brain. Why are oligodendrocytes sensitive to mutant huntingtin? Is it possible to slow down Huntington’s disease by affecting the changes that we have identified?”
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Sanaz Gabery, Jing Eugene Kwa, Rachel Y. Cheong, Barbara Baldo, Costanza Ferrari Bardile,...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Sanaz Gabery, Jing Eugene Kwa, Rachel Y. Cheong, Barbara Baldo, Costanza Ferrari Bardile, Brendan Tan, Catriona McLean, Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis, Govinda R. Poudel, Glenda Halliday, Mahmoud A. Pouladi, Åsa Petersén. Early white matter pathology in the fornix of the limbic system in Huntington disease. Acta Neuropathologica, 2021; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-021-02362-8
Huntington’s is a fatal illness with no treatment to slow its course. The new research findings provide knowledge about where the early changes take place in the brain. This is important for the development of new treatments which, according to the researchers, should target the earliest disease-related changes.
“Our results show that the emotional brain is affected at an early stage, and that this can contribute to the development of psychiatric and cognitive symptoms, which are the most difficult for the patients and their relatives. It is not only nerve cells that are affected, but also other cells, oligodendrocytes, which enable communication between different parts of the brain, that are affected early in the course of the disease,” explains Åsa Petersén, professor of neuroscience at Lunds University and senior consultant in psychiatry at the Huntington Centre in Lund.
Huntington’s disease is caused by a known genetic mutation that results in the production of a protein known as mutant huntingtin in all the cells of the body. However, only certain cells are very sensitive to the protein mutation and these are in specific areas of the brain.
“It is still a mystery why certain cells are sensitive to the protein mutation and why the disease starts to break out at a certain time, even though it was there all along. However, our study shows for the first time that changes in the oligodendrocytes in the emotional brain are expressed in the brains of individuals suffering from Huntington’s disease,” says researcher and first author of the study, Sanaz Gabery.
The researchers believe that previous research focused too much on the typical movement impairments associated with Huntington’s disease and the link to effects on the movement control centre.
“The emotional brain and cells other than just nerve cells are affected by the development of Huntington’s disease. The nerve-fibre system in the emotional brain is already reduced before the typical movement impairments emerge. The changes consist of damage to myelin, i.e. the insulation system in the white matter of the brain, which is important for information transfer, and an effect on genes that are important for oligodendrocytes’ identity and function,” explains Åsa Petersén.
“Today, many researchers are focused on reducing the levels, and thereby the effect, of the disease-inducing mutant huntingtin in the nerves cells and in the brain’s movement control centre. But our findings indicate that there is also a need to examine the white matter in the emotional brain. Why are oligodendrocytes sensitive to mutant huntingtin? Is it possible to slow down Huntington’s disease by affecting the changes that we have identified?”
[date_timestamp] => 1631133129
)
[7] => Array
(
[title] => Ethnic studies increases student engagement and high school graduation – NovLink
[link] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/ethnic-studies-increases-student-engagement-and-high-school-graduation-novlink/
[dc] => Array
(
[creator] => Betty Foster
)
[pubdate] => Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:28:44 +0000
[category] => Health & Science News
[guid] => https://innovativenews.xyz/health-science-news/2021/09/08/ethnic-studies-increases-student-engagement-and-high-school-graduation-novlink/
[description] => Journal Reference: Sade Bonilla, Thomas S. Dee, and Emily K. Penner. Ethnic studies increases longer-run...
[content] => Array
(
[encoded] =>
Journal Reference:
Sade Bonilla, Thomas S. Dee, and Emily K. Penner. Ethnic studies increases longer-run academic engagement and attainment. PNAS, 2021 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2026386118
Sade Bonilla, assistant professor in the College of Education, along with Thomas S. Dee of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford and Emily K. Penner of the School of Education at the University of California Irvine, conducted the research on the longer-term effects of ethnic studies requirements that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In one California school district, 9th graders with a grade-point average of 2.0 or under were automatically enrolled in an ethnic study course. The research showed that enrollment in ethnic studies substantially increased high school graduation, attendance, and the probability of enrolling in college. Prior to this study, there was little causal evidence supporting the positive academic impact of ethnic studies. “A central contribution of our work is the causal evidence that anti-racist pedagogy and curricula promoted engagement and persistence in school,” said Bonilla.
The team studied the records of nearly 1,400 students in San Francisco, Cali., where the board of education approved an ethnic studies requirement for academically struggling 9th graders in 2010. Following their academic journeys through both local and state records, the team found that low-income students and students of color enrolled in the ethnic studies course had improved academic outcomes. Students also were more likely to enroll in college following their graduation from high school, the team found.
Ethnic studies curricula, based on anti-racist principles, is designed to be a rigorous, college-prep course that emphasizes culturally relevant and critically engaged content related to social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes and contemporary social movements. In general, ethnic studies courses focus on the histories of historically marginalized communities, promote the students’ critical awareness of social issues and encourages civic engagement and community-responsive social justice, Bonilla said. It helps students learn about different ethnic histories and the contributions of non-white ethnic groups. Supporters say it gives students a better sense of who they are and a sense of belonging in the larger American community.
“The current debate about critical race theory is regrettably dishonest and politically-driven,” Bonilla said. “There is overlap between the theory and ethnic studies in that the curricula uses a critically aware and historical perspective of prior events and the systems we have in place today.”
While there is increased interest in anti-racist education, it has been politically contentious, the researchers note. Anti-racist curricula and teaching methods represent a way for schools to better promote a just society and improve educational outcomes for low-income and students of color, they add.
“Our results point to this approach having important impacts on students’ high school graduation and college enrollment which is critically important given the relevance of educational attainment on economic success and other socially relevant outcomes like civic engagement and mental health,” Bonilla said.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Sade Bonilla, Thomas S. Dee, and Emily K. Penner. Ethnic studies increases longer-run...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Sade Bonilla, Thomas S. Dee, and Emily K. Penner. Ethnic studies increases longer-run academic engagement and attainment. PNAS, 2021 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2026386118
Sade Bonilla, assistant professor in the College of Education, along with Thomas S. Dee of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford and Emily K. Penner of the School of Education at the University of California Irvine, conducted the research on the longer-term effects of ethnic studies requirements that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In one California school district, 9th graders with a grade-point average of 2.0 or under were automatically enrolled in an ethnic study course. The research showed that enrollment in ethnic studies substantially increased high school graduation, attendance, and the probability of enrolling in college. Prior to this study, there was little causal evidence supporting the positive academic impact of ethnic studies. “A central contribution of our work is the causal evidence that anti-racist pedagogy and curricula promoted engagement and persistence in school,” said Bonilla.
The team studied the records of nearly 1,400 students in San Francisco, Cali., where the board of education approved an ethnic studies requirement for academically struggling 9th graders in 2010. Following their academic journeys through both local and state records, the team found that low-income students and students of color enrolled in the ethnic studies course had improved academic outcomes. Students also were more likely to enroll in college following their graduation from high school, the team found.
Ethnic studies curricula, based on anti-racist principles, is designed to be a rigorous, college-prep course that emphasizes culturally relevant and critically engaged content related to social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes and contemporary social movements. In general, ethnic studies courses focus on the histories of historically marginalized communities, promote the students’ critical awareness of social issues and encourages civic engagement and community-responsive social justice, Bonilla said. It helps students learn about different ethnic histories and the contributions of non-white ethnic groups. Supporters say it gives students a better sense of who they are and a sense of belonging in the larger American community.
“The current debate about critical race theory is regrettably dishonest and politically-driven,” Bonilla said. “There is overlap between the theory and ethnic studies in that the curricula uses a critically aware and historical perspective of prior events and the systems we have in place today.”
While there is increased interest in anti-racist education, it has been politically contentious, the researchers note. Anti-racist curricula and teaching methods represent a way for schools to better promote a just society and improve educational outcomes for low-income and students of color, they add.
“Our results point to this approach having important impacts on students’ high school graduation and college enrollment which is critically important given the relevance of educational attainment on economic success and other socially relevant outcomes like civic engagement and mental health,” Bonilla said.
Christopher B. Cooper, Shayla Nikzad, Hongping Yan, Yuto Ochiai, Jian-Cheng Lai, Zhiao Yu, Gan Chen, Jiheong Kang, and Zhenan Bao. High Energy Density Shape Memory Polymers Using Strain-Induced Supramolecular Nanostructures. ACS Cent. Sci., 2021 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.1c00829
Shape memory polymers alternate between an original, undeformed state and a secondary, deformed state. The deformed state is created by stretching the polymer and is held in place by molecular changes, such as dynamic bonding networks or strain-induced crystallization, that are reversed with heat or light. The polymer then returns to its original state through the release of stored entropic energy. But it’s been challenging for scientists to make these polymers perform energy-intensive tasks. Zhenan Bao and colleagues wanted to develop a new type of shape memory polymer that stretches into a stable, highly elongated state, allowing it to release large amounts of energy when returning to its original state.
The researchers incorporated 4-,4′-methylene bisphenylurea units into a poly(propylene glycol) polymer backbone. In the polymer’s original state, polymer chains were tangled and disordered. Stretching caused the chains to align and form hydrogen bonds between urea groups, creating supermolecular structures that stabilized the highly elongated state. Heating caused the bonds to break and the polymer to contract to its initial, disordered state.
In tests, the polymer could be stretched up to five times its original length and store up to 17.9 J/g energy — almost six times more energy than previous shape memory polymers. The team demonstrated that the stretched material could use this energy to lift objects 5,000 times its own weight upon heating. They also made an artificial muscle by attaching the pre-stretched polymer to the upper and lower arm of a wooden mannequin. When heated, the material contracted, causing the mannequin to bend its arm at the elbow. In addition to its record-high energy density, the shape memory polymer is also inexpensive (raw materials cost about $11 per lb) and easy to make, the researchers say.
)
[summary] => Journal Reference: Christopher B. Cooper, Shayla Nikzad, Hongping Yan, Yuto Ochiai, Jian-Cheng Lai, Zhiao Yu,...
[atom_content] =>
Journal Reference:
Christopher B. Cooper, Shayla Nikzad, Hongping Yan, Yuto Ochiai, Jian-Cheng Lai, Zhiao Yu, Gan Chen, Jiheong Kang, and Zhenan Bao. High Energy Density Shape Memory Polymers Using Strain-Induced Supramolecular Nanostructures. ACS Cent. Sci., 2021 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.1c00829
Shape memory polymers alternate between an original, undeformed state and a secondary, deformed state. The deformed state is created by stretching the polymer and is held in place by molecular changes, such as dynamic bonding networks or strain-induced crystallization, that are reversed with heat or light. The polymer then returns to its original state through the release of stored entropic energy. But it’s been challenging for scientists to make these polymers perform energy-intensive tasks. Zhenan Bao and colleagues wanted to develop a new type of shape memory polymer that stretches into a stable, highly elongated state, allowing it to release large amounts of energy when returning to its original state.
The researchers incorporated 4-,4′-methylene bisphenylurea units into a poly(propylene glycol) polymer backbone. In the polymer’s original state, polymer chains were tangled and disordered. Stretching caused the chains to align and form hydrogen bonds between urea groups, creating supermolecular structures that stabilized the highly elongated state. Heating caused the bonds to break and the polymer to contract to its initial, disordered state.
In tests, the polymer could be stretched up to five times its original length and store up to 17.9 J/g energy — almost six times more energy than previous shape memory polymers. The team demonstrated that the stretched material could use this energy to lift objects 5,000 times its own weight upon heating. They also made an artificial muscle by attaching the pre-stretched polymer to the upper and lower arm of a wooden mannequin. When heated, the material contracted, causing the mannequin to bend its arm at the elbow. In addition to its record-high energy density, the shape memory polymer is also inexpensive (raw materials cost about $11 per lb) and easy to make, the researchers say.
