Do elephants, like humans, call each other by “name”? | Technology Weekly

Compiled by Zhou Shuyi and Wang Xiang

Hybrid office reduces employee turnover without sacrificing efficiency

Previous studies have shown that fully remote work will reduce work efficiency and damage collaboration and innovation. However, new research shows that a flexible working model that combines remote work and office work - hybrid work - will not only not reduce productivity, but also improve employee satisfaction and reduce turnover.

Hybrid working is on the rise. From April to May 2023, a survey of more than 42,000 participants in 34 countries showed that more than 25% of respondents worked in a hybrid mode, and 8% of respondents worked completely from home. The most common hybrid working mode is three days in the office and two days at home per week. According to a survey, about 100 million employees in Europe and the United States adopt a hybrid working mode. Most of these people have a bachelor's degree and are mainly engaged in creative and collaborative work in industries such as science, law, finance, and information technology.

In the new study, researchers conducted a six-month randomized controlled trial from 2021 to 2022 to study the impact of hybrid office on employee performance, turnover and satisfaction. 1,612 college graduate employees from the software engineering, marketing, accounting and finance departments of a travel ticketing company in Shanghai, China participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to a sitting group (working in the office for 5 working days a week) and a hybrid office group (working in the office for 3 days and working from home for 2 days).

The results showed that in the hybrid office group, employee turnover dropped by one-third and job satisfaction increased. The drop in turnover was more significant among female employees, non-management positions, and those with longer commutes. The researchers also evaluated the impact of hybrid office on employee performance and promotion. They tracked employee performance and promotion over the next two years and found no difference between the two groups.

Company managers once worried that hybrid working would affect efficiency, but their views have changed. It is estimated that the reduction in employee turnover caused by hybrid working can save the company millions of dollars in recruitment and training costs.

African elephants call each other by 'name'

Wild African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) have "names" - like humans, they use distinctive name-like calls to address each other, a new study shows.

Previous studies have found that bottlenose dolphins and some parrots call each other by imitating each other's iconic calls (roughly similar to calling dogs "woof" and calling cats "meow"), which is a unique "call sign", but this system of addressing that relies on imitation is obviously different from names. Only humans are known to call each other by name.

The researchers recorded 469 samples of calls from wild African elephants in Kenya, and trained a machine learning model to identify acoustic features and predict the object of each recording. The machine learning model can accurately identify 27.5% of the objects being called in these calls, which is higher than the control group level. The analysis found that the similarity of a certain elephant's calls to the same elephant is significantly higher than when it calls other elephants. The researchers believe that elephants call each other with individual-specific calls, which may contain sound tags similar to names, rather than simply imitating the sounds made by the objects being called.

Researchers record elephant calls in Kenya. | Source: George Wittemyer

To confirm whether elephants can respond to their own names, the authors played recordings of other elephants calling them and other elephants to 17 elephants and compared their responses to these recordings. The results showed that elephants approached the player faster and were more likely to respond vocally after hearing recordings of themselves calling compared to recordings of other elephants calling. This suggests that elephants can judge whether the call is directed at themselves by the call itself.

New research reveals the complex side of elephants. Naming each other means that there is an important social bond between them. Using non-imitative sounds to name other individuals also involves using sounds as symbols to represent another elephant. Behind this is actually an amazing abstract ability. The author pointed out that further research is needed on the specific scenarios in which elephants use "names" to call, and the new research may help reveal the evolution of human language.

Eczema linked to eating too much salt

The consequences of excessive salt intake are not just high blood pressure. A new study found that people with eczema have higher levels of sodium in their urine, suggesting that eating too much salt may be associated with the risk of eczema.

Atopic dermatitis (AD), also known as atopic eczema, is a common chronic, recurrent, inflammatory skin disease. It is characterized by repeated attacks and prolonged course, often manifested as severe itching, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients.

Worldwide, the prevalence of AD in children is 15% to 20%, and in adults it is 6% to 10%. The prevalence of atopic dermatitis in my country is on the rise. In 2002, the prevalence of children aged 1 to 7 years in 10 cities was 2.78%, and in 2014, the prevalence of children aged 1 to 7 years in 12 cities reached 12.94%, and the prevalence of infants aged 1 to 12 months reached 30.48%. In 2019, the burden of AD-related diseases in my country ranked 24th among 369 diseases.

Previous studies have suggested that factors such as genetic susceptibility, skin barrier dysfunction, skin flora disorders, and immune disorders are involved in the onset of AD, but the role of dietary factors is not clear. The new study adopted a cross-sectional study design and included 215,832 adult participants aged 37 to 73 in the UK Biobank to analyze the relationship between 24-hour urinary sodium excretion and AD. About 90% of the sodium in the diet is excreted through urine, so measuring salt intake through urine is a relatively reliable method. The results of the study showed that for every additional gram of sodium excreted in the urine within 24 hours, the rate of previous AD diagnosis increased by 11%, the current risk of AD increased by 16%, and the risk of worsening of existing conditions increased by 11%.

To verify the main findings, the researchers also analyzed data from 13,014 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The results showed that for every gram of sodium consumed per day (about half a teaspoon of table salt), the risk of eczema increased by 22%. The researchers said that limiting dietary sodium intake may be a cost-effective and low-risk AD intervention. However, they also admitted that the new study only used a single urine sample to assess urinary sodium excretion in the past 24 hours, and lacked measurement of long-term sodium intake levels, so it had certain limitations. Some experts believe that it is too early to say that lowering dietary sodium levels can relieve eczema symptoms or reduce the risk of eczema.

The body stretches 30 times longer, thanks to an origami-like cell structure

If your body could stretch and deform at will, what would you most like to do? Would you fight alongside your reliable right hand, or set sail to search for treasure? For the swan long-beaked worm (Lacrymaria olor), the answer is to catch prey. This is a single-celled ciliate with a body length of only 40 microns. However, their long-necked beak can stretch to 1,200 microns in less than 30 seconds, which is 30 times the length of their own body - roughly equivalent to a 1.7-meter-tall human stretching his neck to half the height of the Statue of Liberty. With this rapid deformation ability, the swan long-beaked worm can catch prey far away and then retract it at the same speed.

The swan long-beaked insect retracts and extends its "long beak". | Source: Prakash Lab

How does the swan beetle, which doesn't even have a nervous system, do this? A new study reveals the mechanism behind it at the subcellular level. Using a combination of real-time in vivo imaging, confocal and transmission electron microscopy techniques, the researchers found that the cell membrane of the swan beetle has "creases" like origami, allowing the beak to quickly switch back and forth between the "folded" and "unfolded" states. High-resolution imaging found that the cytoskeleton composed of 15 spiral microtubule filaments supports the cell membrane like arch ribs, forming wrinkles. When the beak stretches and contracts, the microtubules untwist and twist, and relax like the bellows of an accordion.

Mathematically, this structure is subject to strict geometric constraints, and its unfolding and folding methods are specific and unique, so it is very robust. In the life of the swan long-beaked insect, they can stretch and retract more than 20,000 times without error. The researchers said that the new study reveals how the geometric structure of cells drives the behavior of single cells and provides inspiration for the design of micro-robots and lightweight folding structures.

Springer Nature launches AI detection tool to quickly check academic fraud

In response to the increasing problem of research fraud and its growing negative impact, academic publisher Springer Nature announced on June 13 that after a successful pilot, it has launched two new AI tools to help identify false content and problematic images generated by AI in papers.

One of the tools is called Geppetto, which is responsible for text analysis and was developed by Springer Nature in collaboration with Slimmer AI, which was acquired in 2023. Geppetto divides the paper into several parts, checks the text consistency of each part, and then scores each part based on the probability that the text was generated by AI. The higher the score, the higher the probability of problems, which may trigger manual inspection. Geppetto has successfully identified hundreds of fraudulent papers.

Another tool, SnappShot, is responsible for image analysis and is currently used to analyze gel and blot images and find whether there are duplication problems in such images. More images and types of fraud will be covered in the future.

It is reported that the above tools do not determine whether the submission will enter the next stage of the editing process, but rather indicate whether manual judgment is needed. Chris Graf, Director of Research Integrity at Springer Nature, said, "The publishing industry faces the threat of full-scale and malicious paper mills or bad actors... These bad intentions will seriously affect people's trust in science, and investigating and solving these problems will take a lot of time and resources. We will continue to improve these new tools, which will help us stay one step ahead of fraudsters and ensure that the research we publish is solid, reliable, trustworthy and referenceable."

"Nobel Prize Weathervane" announces winners

On June 12, local time, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced the winners of the 2024 Kavli Prizes. The Kavli Prize is awarded every two years to honor outstanding scientists in three fields: astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, symbolizing the grandest, the smallest, and the most complex, respectively. It is regarded as a bellwether for the Nobel Prize, along with the Lasker Award and the Canada Gairdner International Award.

The Astrophysics Prize was awarded to Sara Seager and David Charbonneau for their groundbreaking contributions to the discovery of exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres. They pioneered methods to detect atomic species in planetary atmospheres and measure their thermal infrared radiation, laying the foundation for the search for molecular fingerprints of atmospheres around giant planets and rocky planets.

The Nanoscience Award was given to Robert S. Langer, Armand Paul Alivisatos and Chad A. Mirkin, whose research and application of nanomaterial engineering have revolutionized the field of nanomedicine. Langer proposed that controlled release of drugs could be achieved by "nanoengineering" biomolecules. Alivisatos did pioneering work in bioimaging by functionalizing the surfaces of semiconductor nanocrystals. Mirkin introduced the concept of spherical nucleic acids (SNA), which led to a rapid, automated point-of-care medical diagnostic system. Their discoveries have made fundamental contributions to the development of therapeutics, vaccines, bioimaging and diagnostics.

The Neuroscience Prize is awarded to Nancy Kanwisher, Doris Tsao, and Winrich Freiwald for their discovery of a specialized system in the brain for recognizing faces. Their collaborative work over decades has revealed the neural mechanisms underlying one of the brain’s most complex tasks: the response to faces. In the early days of functional brain imaging, Kanwisher located the brain’s face-processing center, answering long-standing questions about whether certain brain areas specialize for specific tasks. Subsequently, Tsao and Freiwald ingeniously combined functional imaging and single-cell recordings in macaques to reveal a six-area system that brings together information about faces into a complete picture. Through their work on specialization for face recognition in the neocortex, they have provided fundamental principles of neural organization that will further our understanding of object and scene recognition.

Frictionless ice

A new study discovered the structural superlubricity behavior between two-dimensional ice and graphene. Combined with theoretical simulations, it revealed its microscopic mechanism that is different from traditional superlubricity systems and clarified the origin of ultrafast water transport properties under low-dimensional confined conditions.

Superlubricity refers to the lubrication state when the friction coefficient is less than 0.01, when the friction between objects in relative motion is almost zero or even completely disappears. Superlubricity is common in non-commensurate rigid crystal interfaces. Interestingly, unlike macroscopic water flow, which is hindered by the friction on the channel surface, in nanofluidic devices, if the water channel size is close to the atomic scale (<1 nm), the water permeability will increase by an order of magnitude. Theoretically, this abnormal ultrafast water transport may be related to "superlubricity" - water in an atomic-scale confined system is likely to form an ordered structure similar to ice, showing superlubricity.

Based on this, the researchers believe that the problem of two-dimensional confined water transport in nanochannels can be transformed into a two-dimensional ice transport problem. Using a qPlus scanning probe microscope, they achieved controllable manipulation and friction measurement of two-dimensional ice on graphene and hexagonal boron nitride surfaces with atomic-level precision. The experimental results show that the area-normalized friction of two-dimensional ice on the graphene surface decreases with the increase of the total area of ​​the iceberg, and eventually decreases to 1 pN/nm2 within the experimentally measurable area. The fitted attenuation coefficient is about -0.5, which is consistent with the friction characteristics expected by superlubrication; while the normalized friction of two-dimensional ice on the boron nitride surface is independent of the area of ​​the iceberg and is a constant (about 18 pN/nm2). Therefore, the total friction increases linearly with the increase of the two-dimensional ice area, which belongs to the traditional friction behavior. The molecular dynamics simulation calculation results show quantitative consistency with the experimental results. Theoretical simulation shows that for larger two-dimensional icebergs on the graphene surface, the static friction coefficient can even be lower than 0.01, which is consistent with the quantitative characteristics of superlubrication. The superlubricating behavior of two-dimensional ice on the graphene surface originates from the weak van der Waals interaction between water molecules and graphene and the incommensurability between the two-dimensional ice and graphene lattices.

The researchers said the new research helps understand the origins of ultrafast water transport properties under atomic-scale confinement and promotes research in fields such as nanofluid engineering and nanotribology.

Manipulating Iceland with a scanning probe microscope tip. | Source: Da Wu et al.

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