Now research by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, and Complutense University of Madrid and Seville University in Spain, sheds light on the short-term consequences of workplace bullying on various indicators of sleep.

These include waking up too early (sleep severity), interference with daily life (sleep impact) and dissatisfaction with own sleep (sleep satisfaction).

Writing in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, the researchers aimed to examine how bullying at work impacts insomnia and to test the mediating role of “anger rumination” — which involves repetitive, persistent thinking about distressing events, such as bullying.

They found the relationship between bullying and sleep increases over time, particularly in relation to sleep onset difficulties, staying asleep and early morning awakening, and is explained by work-related anger felt by the employee and this constant rumination.

They also found evidence of insomnia symptoms being “contagious” between employees and their partners, meaning that the sleep issues (both severity and impact) of one person can influence the other, highlighting how interconnected sleep health can be in relationships.

Lead UK author Professor Ana Sanz-Vergel, from UEA’s Norwich Business School, said: “Our results show that the effects of workplace bullying are time-dependent and accumulative, and go beyond the individual and the work setting, impacting the partner’s sleep as well.

“When individuals experience bullying at work, they may engage in rumination as a way to mentally process and attempt to cope with the negative events. However, this repeated thinking about distressing events can lead to the development of sleep problems such as difficulties in falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleep impact and satisfaction.

“Therefore, rumination can be seen as a maladaptive coping strategy to deal with workplace bullying, meaning that while this type of reflection may initially seem like a way to resolve issues or understand the situation, it can actually lead to more harm in the long run.”

Current knowledge is limited regarding the short-time impact of bullying processes on sleep and the association between workplace bullying and sleep. This is especially important considering that sleep problems are often immediate or short-term responses to stressful situations. There is also limited information about the effects of bullying beyond the individual experiencing it.

To help address this, the team conducted two studies. In the first, 147 employees were followed over five days, and in the second, 139 couples were followed for a period of two months. In both the participants, all from Spain, had to report on their exposure to workplace bullying, work-related anger rumination and different indicators of insomnia.

The first study showed bullying indirectly affected sleep severity through rumination and in the second,also sleep satisfaction and sleep impact, indicating that rumination is a key factor in how bullying affects various aspects of sleep quality.

“It is very interesting that insomnia is contagious,” said Prof Sanz Vergel. “Partners appear to influence each other’s sleep severity and sleep impact, which is not surprising, since one individual’s awakening could cause the other to wake up as well.

“If that’s the case, then both of them can feel that lack of sleep interferes with their daily life. Satisfaction with sleep, however, is less susceptible to this contagion, possibly because it involves more subjective elements.”

The authors recommend that interventions around workplace bullying should be designed both at the organizational and individual levels. From an organizational viewpoint, reducing stressors and fostering a healthy organizational culture become crucial.

At the individual level, interventions should be focused on developing skills to help individuals more effectively deal with stressors.

Prof Sanz Vergel added: “Training on how to disconnect from work has proven efficient and has been shown to minimize the effects of bullying. In addition, couple-oriented prevention programs in the context of the workplace are needed — this could help provide coping strategies to both members of the couple, which would in turn reduce rumination levels and insomnia.”

The research was supported by funding from the Spanish Department of Science and Innovation.

Fires on peatlands, which are carbon-rich, can almost double global fire-driven carbon emissions. Researchers found that despite accounting for only a quarter of the total UK land area that burns each year, dwarfed by moor and heathland, peatland fires have caused up to 90% of annual UK fire-driven carbon emissions since 2001 — with emissions spikes in particularly dry years.

Peat only burns when it’s hot and dry enough — conditions that are occurring more often with climate change. The peatlands of Saddleworth Moor in the Peak District, and Flow Country in northern Scotland, have both been affected by huge wildfires in recent years.

The researchers say land-managers can play an important role in helping to achieve Net Zero climate goals by keeping peatlands wet. This will reduce the likelihood of intense fires and their associated high carbon emissions.

Unlike heather moorland which takes up to twenty years to regrow after a fire, burnt peatland can take centuries to reaccumulate. The loss of this valuable carbon store makes the increasing wildfire frequency on peatlands a real cause for concern.

The researchers also calculated that carbon emissions from fires on UK peatland are likely to rise by at least 60% if the planet warms by 2^oC.

The findings, which are broadly relevant to peatlands in temperate climates, are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“We found that peatland fires are responsible for a disproportionately large amount of the carbon emissions caused by UK wildfires, which we project will increase even more with climate change,” said Dr Adam Pellegrini in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, senior author of the study.

He added: “Peatland reaccumulates lost carbon so slowly as it recovers after a wildfire that this process is limited for climate change mitigation. We need to focus on preventing that peat from burning in the first place, by re-wetting peatlands.”

The researchers found that the UK’s ‘fire season’ — when fires occur on natural land — has lengthened dramatically since 2011, from between one and four months in the years 2011-2016 to between six and nine months in the years 2017-2021. The change is particularly marked in Scotland, where almost half of all UK fires occur.

Nine percent of the UK is covered by peatland, which in a healthy condition removes over three million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year.

The researchers estimate 800,000 tonnes of carbon were emitted from fires on UK peatlands between 2001 and 2021. The 2018 Saddleworth Moor fire emitted 24,000 tonnes of carbon, and the 2019 Flow Country fire emitted 96,000 tonnes of carbon from burning peat.

To get their results, the researchers mapped all UK wildfires over a period of 20 years — assessing where they burn, how much carbon they emit, and how climate change is affecting fires. This involved combining data on fire locations, vegetation type and carbon content, soil moisture, and peat depth. Using UK Met Office data, the also team used simulated climate conditions to predict how wildfires in the UK will change in the future.

The study only considered land where wildfires have occurred in the past, and did not consider the future increases in burned area that are likely to occur with hotter, drier UK summers.

Rewetting peatlands to protecting the carbon they store will require land managers to be incentivised — the researchers say this won’t be easy, but the impact could be big.

“Buffering the UK’s peatlands against really hot, dry summers is a great way to reduce carbon emissions as part of our goal to reach net zero. Humans are capable of incredible things when we’re incentivised to do them,” said Pellegrini.

An average of 5,600 hectares of moor and heathland burns across the UK each year, compared to 2,500 hectares of peatland.

Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain how the brain perceives pain. One is the Estimate Hypothesis, where the brain estimates the intensity of pain based on predictions. The other is the Surprise Hypothesis, where the brain perceives pain as the difference between prediction and reality, otherwise known as the prediction error. In this study, the mechanism underlying the perception of pain were investigated. In the experiment, healthy participants received painful thermal stimuli and reported felt pain intensity while observing painful or non-painful visual stimuli in the virtual reality. The researchers found that the participants strongly perceived pain when the prediction error was large, demonstrating that the Surprise Hypothesis more adequately explains the pain perception mechanism in the brain. The study further confirmed that pain was amplified when unexpected events occurred.

People with chronic pain often experience vague pain-related fears and anxieties. Possibly, this uncertain gap between expectation and reality further increases the perceived intensity of pain. Therefore, reducing the gap between pain expectation and reality or “surprise” is important in reducing pain. A better understanding of pain perception would facilitate the development of new treatments that would enhance recovery from chronic pain and trauma.

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (grant numbers 19H05729 and 23KJ0261).

Thermoelectric coolers, also called solid-state refrigerators, can induce localized cooling by using an electric current to transfer heat from one side of the device to another. Their long lifetimes, invulnerability to leaks, size and shape tunability, and the lack of moving parts (such as circulating liquids) make these devices ideal for diverse cooling applications, such as electronics. However, manufacturing them out of ingots is associated with high costs and generates lots of material waste. In addition, the devices’ performance remains limited.

Now, a team at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), led by Verbund Professor for Energy Sciences and Head of the Werner Siemens Thermoelectric Laboratory Maria Ibáñez, with first author and ISTA postdoc Shengduo Xu, developed high-performance thermoelectric materials out of the 3D printer and used them to build a thermoelectric cooler. “Our innovative integration of 3D printing into thermoelectric cooler fabrication greatly improves manufacturing efficiency and reduces costs,” says Xu. Also, in contrast to previous attempts at 3D printing thermoelectric materials, the present method yields materials with considerably higher performance. ISTA Professor Ibáñez adds, “With commercial-level performance, our work has the potential to extend beyond academia, holding practical relevance and attracting interest from industries seeking real-world applications.”

Pushing the boundaries of thermoelectric technologies

While all materials demonstrate some thermoelectric effect, it is often too negligible to be useful. Materials exhibiting a high enough thermoelectric effect are usually so-called “degenerate semiconductors,” i.e., “doped” semiconductors, to which impurities are introduced intentionally so they behave like conductors. Current state-of-the-art thermoelectric coolers are produced using ingot-based manufacturing techniques — expensive and power-hungry procedures requiring extensive machining processes after production, where a lot of material is wasted. “With our present work, we can 3D print exactly the needed shape of thermoelectric materials. In addition, the resulting devices exhibit a net cooling effect of 50 degrees in the air. This means that our 3D-printed materials perform similarly to ones that are significantly more expensive to manufacture,” says Xu. Thus, the team of ISTA material scientists proposes a scalable and cost-effective production method for thermoelectric materials, circumventing energy-intensive and time-consuming steps.

Printed materials with optimized particle bonding

Beyond applying 3D printing techniques to produce thermoelectric materials, the team designed the inks so that, as the carrier solvent evaporates, effective and robust atomic bonds are formed between grains, creating an atomically connected material network. As a result, the interfacial chemical bonds improve the charge transfer between grains. This explains how the team managed to enhance the thermoelectric performance of their 3D-printed materials while also shedding new light on the transport properties of porous materials. “We employed an extrusion-based 3D printing technique and designed the ink formulation to ensure the integrity of the printed structure and boost particle bonding. This allowed us to produce the first thermoelectric coolers from printed materials with comparable performance to ingot-based devices while saving material and energy,” says Ibáñez.

Medical applications, energy harvesting, and sustainability

Beyond rapid heat management in electronics and wearable devices, thermoelectric coolers could have medical applications, including burn treatment and muscle strain relief. In addition, the ink formulation method developed by the team of ISTA scientists can be adapted for other materials to be used in high-temperature thermoelectric generators — devices that can generate electrical voltage from a temperature difference. According to the team, such an approach could broaden the applicability of thermoelectric generators across various waste energy harvesting systems.

“We successfully executed a full-cycle approach, from optimizing the raw materials’ thermoelectric performance to fabricating a stable, high-performance end-product,” says Ibáñez. Xu adds, “Our work offers a transformative solution for thermoelectric device production and heralds a new era of efficient and sustainable thermoelectric technologies.”

A study into the vaccine’s effectiveness, published in eBioMedicine, was led by experts from the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute at University of Sydney, the Centenary Institute and the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science (MIPS) at Monash University.

Currently the only approved vaccine for TB is the century-old Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, which is widely used despite its effectiveness in adults being inconsistent.

The study found that the new mRNA vaccine was successful in triggering an immune defence response that helped to reduce TB numbers in infected mice. In addition, the researchers discovered that for mice that had received the BCG vaccine, a booster dose of the new mRNA vaccine significantly improved their long-term protection.

The vaccine used mRNA technology, which is where genetic instructions are used to trigger an immune response in the body, as opposed to using a weakened or deadened version of a virus.

Senior author Professor Jamie Triccas, Deputy Director of the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, said: “Our findings demonstrate that an mRNA vaccine can induce potent, pathogen-specific immune responses that target TB, a disease that has long evaded effective vaccine development. This represents a major advance in TB vaccine research and provides a strong rationale for further clinical development.”

TB is the leading cause of infectious mortality worldwide, responsible for approximately 1.3 million deaths annually, with a particular prevalence in countries such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan.

The researchers hope that the mRNA vaccine will ultimately be more effective and consistent than the BCG when used in humans. This is because, unlike protein-based or live-attenuated vaccines (those that contain a weakened version of a pathogen), mRNA vaccines allow for rapid adaptation, making them an attractive option for global TB control efforts.

Dr Claudio Counoupas, co-lead author from the Centenary Institute’s Centre for Infection & Immunity, highlighted the vaccine’s potential impact: “mRNA vaccines offer a scalable, cost-effective, and adaptable platform that can be rapidly deployed against infectious diseases. This study is an important step in demonstrating that mRNA technology is not just for COVID-19 but could be a game-changer for bacterial diseases like TB.”

Professor Colin Pouton from Monash University, a key contributor to the study, explained: “The success of mRNA vaccines in the COVID-19 pandemic underscored their ability to generate strong immune responses. Our study provides the evidence that this platform can be harnessed for TB, potentially improving protection and durability of immunity in a way that traditional vaccines cannot.”

Following the study’s promising results, the research team is now looking to advance the vaccine to clinical trials.

“Our next goal is to refine the formulation and assess its efficacy in larger models before moving to human studies,” said Professor Triccas. “Given the global burden of TB and the limitations of current vaccines, we believe this platform could provide a new pathway toward eradicating this disease.”

Phosphorus and nitrogen, which are essential for plant growth, are often supplemented by chemical fertilizers to assure proper balance and output of produce. However, the amount of these nutrients on the planet is increasing due to excessive use, which in turn is causing various environmental problems. For this reason, there is a growing movement to promote sustainable agriculture through the recycling of phosphorus and nitrogen. In Japan, a target has been set to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers by 30% by 2050.

With this in mind, a research group led by Ryosuke Endo, a lecturer, and graduate student Satoru Sakuma at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Agriculture conducted an experiment on producing recycled liquid fertilizer from organic waste as a replacement for chemical fertilizers. Using food waste, manure, and sewer sludge, the researchers filled nitrification reactors with organic waste and tap water, then extracted nitrified biogas digestate (f-NBD) to use as seed culture. The phosphorus and nitrogen outputs from each type of organic waste were compared. This experimental method produced nutrient solutions capable of replacing unsustainable chemical phosphorus and nitrogen.

Additionally, the researchers have established an improved method that increases phosphorus solubility, as phosphorus often fails to dissolve during traditional fertilizer production methods. By lowering the pH of the waste-derived liquid fertilizer, the phosphorus will dissolve and produce high phosphorus content, before the pH is restored to its original level.

“This research suggests that it is possible to replace up to 100% of the nitrogen and up to 77% of the phosphorus in liquid chemical fertilizers with the solution produced in this study,” stated graduate student Sakuma.

“Reducing the use of chemical fertilizers has become a global trend,” Dr. Endo added, “but hydroponic agricultural systems are highly dependent on them. By applying the results of this research and reusing the phosphorus contained in organic waste as liquid fertilizer, we hope that this will lead to the development of recycling-oriented agriculture.”