The study, done in China, found that teachers in the Chinese equivalent of professional learning communities (PLCs) were more willing to share their knowledge and expertise when they rated their PLC leaders as being higher in humility.

The reason was that humble leaders made teachers feel more empowered to share their knowledge because they felt psychologically safe to take risks, said study co-author Roger Goddard, professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University.

“A little humility on the part of leaders goes a long way in helping groups be more productive and collaborative,” Goddard said.

“When people feel their leader admits mistakes and is open to learning from others, everyone contributes more and makes these groups more effective.”

Goddard conducted the study with Yun Qu of Beijing Normal University in China and Jinjie Zhu, a doctoral student in education at Ohio State. The study was published online recently in the journal Educational Studies.

In the United States and elsewhere, PLCs are designed to facilitate professional development through discussions in which teachers share their best practices and what they have learned through their experiences in the classroom.

“Teachers can feel fairly isolated in the classroom,” Goddard said. “PLCs help teachers build a sense of community and learn from each other about how to improve classroom instruction.”

In China, the equivalent of PLCs are called Teaching Research Groups (TRGs). The leaders of TRGs are experienced teachers who are not traditional administrators, but do serve as supervisors and coordinators and are involved in teacher evaluations, lesson planning and teacher selection.

This study involved 537 teachers from 238 TRGs in a variety of both urban and rural schools in China.

Teachers rated their TRG leaders on three dimensions of humility: their willingness to view themselves accurately, such as admitting when they didn’t know how to do something; their appreciation of others’ strengths; and their teachability, such as being open to other teachers’ advice.

Results showed that teachers who rated their TRG leaders as being higher in humility were more likely to report that they shared their knowledge and expertise in TRG meetings.

“The whole point of these groups is for teachers to share their knowledge, so the fact that humble leaders inspired individuals in their groups to be more willing to do this is very significant,” Goddard said.

The study also found why humble leaders were so effective in helping their teachers share their knowledge.

Results showed that in TRGs with more humble leaders, teachers reported higher levels of psychological safety — they felt they could take risks and knew that others would not act in a way to undermine their efforts.

That feeling of safety led them to feel more psychologically empowered: They felt their jobs had meaning, they had autonomy to do their work, and they felt they were competent and that their work had impact in the school.

So humble leadership led to teachers feeling psychologically safe, which made them feel empowered and ultimately led them to share their experience and knowledge more fully with their colleagues, Goddard said.

“This feeling of teachers that they could safely share their knowledge comes from having a leader who has humility — an openness to learning from others, a willingness to revise opinions, and an appreciation for the strengths of others,” he said.

While this research was done in China, Goddard said he believes the results would be similar in the United States and elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of evidence that suggests trust is a key part of successful organizations. And feeling psychologically safe and empowered to share your knowledge in the workplace is part of building trust, and that’s what humble leaders help create,” he said.

“That is as true in the United States as it is in China.”

In the same way, the results should be applicable outside of education.

“Many of the same principles that make successful organizations cut across cultures and fields. It makes sense that humble leaders will build trust and better relationships that will increase the effectiveness of any groups that have to work together,” Goddard said.

The carbon footprint of timber construction is significantly lower than concrete construction, and timber construction has often been viewed as better for the health of human occupants as well. However, wood panels still use adhesives made from fossil raw materials. They contain formaldehyde, which can be harmful to health, especially for those working in the adhesive manufacturing process. People living in or visiting buildings can also be exposed to toxic formaldehyde from wood panels.

Lignin, on the other hand, comes from wood itself. It binds cellulose and hemicellulose together and gives wood its tough, strong structure. Lignin accounts for about a quarter of the weight of wood and is produced in huge quantities in the pulp and bioprocessing industry. Only two to five percent of the lignin produced is used, and the rest is burned in factories for energy.

Previously, lengthy and chemical-intensive pre-treatments have been necessary to use lignin in formaldehyde-free adhesives. The adhesive developed by Aalto University researchers can use purified kraft lignin and the chemical reaction to make the adhesive takes a few minutes instead of up to 10 hours. No additional heating of the raw material is needed, which reduces energy consumption. The only by-products of the process are salt and sodium hydroxide, or lye.

Monika Österberg, professor at the Aalto University School of Chemical Engineering, stresses that this is an important development for both the environment and industry. ‘Using lignin as a material can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase the processing value of forests. This is why research on lignin is an important priority for us at Aalto University.’

Doctoral researcher Alexander Henn explains that glued wood panels such as plywood and chipboard are increasingly used for walls, ceilings and flooring. ‘Therefore, it is important to overcome the disadvantages of wood-based panel adhesives and develop the new innovation into a commercial product. This would enable a shift towards more wood-based construction, as a strong and heat-resistant adhesive made from natural materials makes construction truly ecological and safe.’

The innovation is a major step forward for the forestry and glue industries, as the lignin content of previous adhesives has been relatively low (around 20-50 percent), while the new Aalto University innovation has a lignin content of over 90 percent. The adhesive is strong and non-toxic, and protects surfaces from fire, so it can even be used as a flame retardant.

According to the researchers, lignin can also be used as a raw material for applications such as coatings and composites. Research work will continue in the laboratory, and various commercialization opportunities are likely to be explored in collaboration with LignoSphere Oy, a spin-off from Aalto University.

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Materials provided by Aalto University. Original written by Virpi Raski. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Dr Kate Quigley, a senior research scientist at the Minderoo Foundation who conducted the research at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and James Cook University, has developed a new non-destructive method for rapidly and safely scanning coral — cutting down on previously laborious and lengthy surveying techniques.

Inspired by a visit to the dentist, Dr Quigley remarked on the similarities between coral and our teeth — both being calcium-based and requiring measuring tools that can withstand wet surfaces. “One day, I was at the dentist, and they rolled out this new scanning machine. I knew immediately that it was something that could apply to scanning very small corals given corals and teeth actually share many similar properties. The rest is history!”

Coral reefs are among the earth’s most productive ecosystems and provide essential nutritional and protective services to people across the globe. These important ecosystems have suffered serious declines over recent decades — spurring a flurry of research around their basic biology and restoration. Understanding the critical life stage of juvenile coral allows scientists to predict ecosystem changes, the impacts of disturbance and their potential for recovery.

Reconstructing coral 3D models reveals insights into their health and response to pressures like rising temperatures or acidification. Several methods exist to build and assess these 3D models, yet their effectiveness is reduced when constructing measurements at small scales.

Dr Quigley said: “At the moment, it is difficult to accurately measure very small objects in 3D, especially if you are interested in measuring small live animals, like coral, without hurting them.

“During my PhD it would take half a day to produce one scan, and I was interested in scanning hundreds of corals at a time.

“For the first time, this new method will allow scientists to measure thousands of tiny corals fast, accurately and without any negative health impacts on the coral. This has the potential to expand large-scale monitoring of ocean health and for up-scaling coral reef restoration.”

To assess the effectiveness of these dental scanners, namely the ITero Element 5D Flex, Dr Quigley measured juvenile corals at the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s National Sea Simulator. The coral, from the Great Barrier Relief, were temporarily removed from their indoor aquarium and their surface area and volume recorded before being returned to the tanks.

On average it took less than three minutes to scan and build a model of each individual coral compared to over 4 hours with previous methods — a 99% decrease in the time required to carry out such measurements. Dr Quigley recorded equally fast and precise performance when measuring and comparing models of dead skeletons and living coral tissue. Removing the need to sacrifice live animals to take measurements.

Whilst this is a massive step forward in cutting down the time involved in monitoring and studying small marine animals, 3D scans still need to be processed manually, which slows down analysis. Dr Quigley hopes that the next avenue for this research is to try and create an automatic analysis pipeline from scanning to measurement, potentially using AI.

At present, this technology can only be used to perform measurements out of the water. The hardware is not waterproof as the scanner relies on confocal laser technology.

“Potentially the scanner could be made completely waterproof. However, it is unclear how well the laser technology would work completely submerged underwater. We have taken this technology on the boat before and brought up wild and laboratory-reared corals for measurement, so we are getting there!”

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Materials provided by British Ecological Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In this week’s international journal Ambio, two sustainability scholars at Michigan State University (MSU) outline how today’s catastrophes — pandemics, wars, natural disasters — play out differently in the modern world, with effects often reverberating farther and faster than their historic counterparts. Understanding the true impacts both near the source and across the world — and often months or years later, will be crucial.

“Given the current globalized world, our challenges have also become global,” said Andrés Viña, of MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). “The solutions to these challenges then need to also be global. Even though our individual actions operate at the local level, collectively they have worldwide repercussions. Therefore, we need to find ways of working together for the common good, irrespective of political boundaries.”

Technology — particularly telecommunications and transportation — has made the world smaller and more connected as people, goods and information move fast. While history can be a good teacher, examining new disasters in an updated way shows today’s problems — like the COVID-19 pandemic — are having a broader, faster impact than earlier global shocks.

Public transportation innovations allowed The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 to spread fast and furious, and quick action by governments to mandate lock downs and travel bans helped. But today’s COVID outbreaks and impacts were much faster and farther. Obvious disruptions such as shortages, changes in the costs of goods, restrictions and disruptions in travel are giving way to more subtle but significant changes.

The paper’s authors note how coping strategies on one part of the world, such as a country shifting from local food to imported, can cause a country far away to turn more forests into farmland to meet a new need, creating environmental stresses to fragile wildlife. And then transporting the goods can create other impacts, like pollution, but also jobs, at many places between those farms and their new customers.

The point, the authors note, is that if the global community doesn’t learn to spot and address the short- and long-term changes, both harm and opportunity can be unchecked. Viña and co-author Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and CSIS director, use a new method to uncover the complexities of the real world.

The metacoupling framework creates an integrated way to look at how people and nature interact across the world and provides a new language to look at the big picture and at details simultaneously.

“Events such as war, drought and disease that start in one place set off chain reactions worldwide that are often hard to observe if we look at the world through traditional lenses,” Liu said. “And that also means solutions will require a new way of both thinking and reacting to take advantage of them.”

“Effects of global shocks on the evolution of an interconnected world” notes that COVID has shifted much of modern life — where people get their food and goods, how we travel for work and pleasure, how health care is distributed, and how natural resources are used and abused. The pandemic is one of many examples that show building resiliency is a global project.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and Michigan AgBioResearch.

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Materials provided by Michigan State University. Original written by Sue Nichols. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.