What do the crowd at a football stadium, the feet of a centipede, and the inside of your lungs have in common?All of these systems show the same specific kind of organization, as it was recently found by the scientists. The Mexican wave in a stadium looks like a pattern traveling across the tiers. Similarly, the legs of a centipede move in canon with illusory waves sweeping along its entire length. On a microscopic level, tiny hairs in our lungs called cilia wave together to transport mucus. This serves as a first line of defense against invading pathogens.
Unequal interactions between cilia cause synchronization
To create a synchronized and efficient wave, cilia need to accurately coordinate their beating motion. Unlike football fans watching their neighbors and the nervous system coordinating the centipede’s legs, cilia have no such intelligent control system.
In their new study, the scientists David Hickey, Ramin Golestanian and Andrej Vilfan from the department Living Matter Physics at MPI-DS now highlight the importance or border regions for the coordination of cilia. “When many cilia beat closely together, they can synchronize by beating slightly before their neighbors to one side, and slightly after their neighbors to the other — just like a Mexican wave in a stadium,” says David Hickey, first author of the study. This synchronization is mediated by the fluid surrounding the cilia and initiated by the border region. Notably, two cilia beating near each other don’t necessarily exert the same force to each other. Depending on its position, a cilium can be more effected by its neighbor than vice versa, especially in a dense carpet of cilia as it frequently occurs in nature. This can eventually cause a directed, non-reciprocal pattern forming a wave.
Synchronization of cilia is initiated by border regions
“The cilia at a border region take the role as a pacemaker which entrain other cilia one after another,” Hickey summarizes the findings. “This observation is different from previous models where boundaries were assumed to perturb the order,” he continues. This view was also shared by the renowned physicist Wolfgang Pauli who joked about this: “God made solids, but surfaces were the work of the devil.”
As found now, border regions of surfaces can in fact allow a better understanding of the self-organization of living matter. At the same time, the model reveals striking similarities between mechanisms in the microscopic world and on the macroscopic scale.
In a remarkable breakthrough in the field of Mathematical Science, Professor Kyudong Choi from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at UNIST has provided an irrefutable proof that certain spherical vortices exist in a stable state. This groundbreaking discovery holds significant implications for predicting weather anomalies and advancing weather prediction technologies.
A vortex is a rotating region of fluid, such as air or water, characterized by intense rotation. Common examples include typhoons and tornadoes frequently observed in news reports. Professor Choi’s mathematical proof establishes the stability of specific types of vortex structures that can be encountered in real-world fluid flows.
The study builds upon the foundational Euler equation formulated by Leonhard Euler in 1757 to describe the flow of eddy currents. In 1894, British mathematician M. Hill mathematically demonstrated that a ball-shaped vortex could maintain its shape indefinitely while moving along its axis.
Professor Choi’s research confirms that Hill’s spherical vortex maximizes kinetic energy under certain conditions through the application of variational methods. By incorporating functional analysis and partial differential equation theory from mathematical analysis, this study extends previous investigations on two-dimensional fluid flows to encompass three-dimensional fluid dynamics with axial symmetry conditions.
One notable feature identified by Hill is the presence of strong upward airflow at the front of the spherical vortex — an attribute often observed in phenomena like typhoons and tornadoes. Professor Choi’s findings serve as a starting point for further studies involving measurements related to residual time associated with these ascending air currents.
“Research on vortex stability has gained international attention,” stated Professor Choi. “[A]nd it holds long-term potential for advancements in today’s weather forecasting technology.”
Supported by funding from Korea Research Foundation under the Ministry of Science and ICT as well as UNIST, this study was published ahead of official release on July 24th via the online edition of Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Vaccine Research Center have developed an improved way to test potential vaccines against bird flu. The report was published this week in the journal iScience.
Concerning reports about avian flu outbreaks at poultry facilities across the country and abroad highlight the increasingly urgent need for a safe and effective vaccine that could thwart a possible spread of the virus from human to human. To be ready to safely and efficiently test promising vaccine candidates, researchers developed an animal model that more closely mimics the typical symptoms of human infection than any such model so far. This proactive work minimizes the steps needed to quickly validate and deploy a new vaccine in a crisis.
“The COVID-19 pandemic got people to realize that it is not enough to respond to a pandemic when it happens. We really need to make sure that we are ready before it is here,” said co-senior author Doug Reed, Ph.D., associate professor of immunology at Pitt’s Center for Vaccine Research.
Bird flu, caused by H5N1 influenza virus, is primarily spread by migratory wild birds and can decimate poultry populations, including chickens and ducks. Although the virus has infected people, previous infections have not spread efficiently from human to human. However, there are documented cases of H5N1 spreading in mammalian populations, ranging from minks to sea lions and dolphins, raising concern about human-to-human spread.
People infected with H5N1 virus can develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, manifesting in short and labored breathing. H5N1 kills more than half of those infected.
To ensure that a future vaccine will be protective, the researchers turned to macaques, which have close anatomy and physiology to humans, making them a choice model for the testing of life-saving medicines.
Reed and his coauthor, Simon Barratt-Boyes, Ph.D., professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the Pitt School of Public Health, reasoned that delivering H5N1 virus by small particle aerosol would make it more likely to reach deep into the lung and mimic natural exposure. They first demonstrated this aerosolized infection model in research published in 2017. In the new paper, they refined their model and evaluated whether a seasonal flu vaccine, which protects against human influenza A and B viruses, when given three times with an experimental adjuvant could prevent ARDS upon exposure to aerosolized H5N1 virus.
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All monkeys that received adjuvanted seasonal flu vaccine were protected from death, and there were low but measurable neutralizing antibodies against H5N1 in their blood samples, the quantity of which was inversely correlated with the severity of their symptoms.
While the researchers caution that their findings do not mean that a seasonal flu vaccine can efficiently protect against bird flu, they are optimistic that protective efficacy of future vaccines that target H5N1 can be tested using this model and deployed faster.
“The original idea behind this work was more than 20 years in the making,” said Reed. “Now there is a path forward to get people protected against this devastating disease.”
Masaru Kanekiyo, Ph.D., of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, also contributed to the study.
The University of Pittsburgh has received funding support as an agreement under NIH contract number HHSN261201500003I to Leidos Biomedical Research in Frederick, Maryland.
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Being older at work is still seen as something to hide.
Elizabeth Harris has witnessed the toll it takes on friends and family. She’s watched her friends avoid mentioning graduation dates and years of experience on resumes, and dye hair before a job interview.
“I have been super lucky. And I have not [experienced age discrimination], as far as I know,” said Harris, the chief strategy officer of media and ad agency Arc Worldwide. “But it’s out there, for sure.”
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Older age should be seen as a competitive workplace advantage. A 60-year-old startup founder is three times more likely to create a successful startup than a 25-year-old tech founder. Teams with older workers are more innovative than ones without them, Deloitte research found.
But even with their wealth of wisdom and leadership, older workers are all too frequently dismissed and discounted.
So talking about your older age is already radical enough on its own. But what if there was a club where getting older was not just acknowledged, but celebrated and championed?
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In 2018, Harris decided to do just that when she started a new employee resource group at her company: one for midlife and later-career workers.
She appreciated the great work of the ERGs for women and parents that she was involved in, but she noticed there were particular issues directly affecting people over 45 that weren’t being talked about enough.
“ParentKind was talking a lot about caregiving for little kids, but they weren’t talking about when you’re caregiving for kids and parents at the same time,” she said. “They do financial planning and seminars in VivaWomen!, which is our women’s group, but they weren’t talking about specifically how do you save for your kids’ college fund and retirement?”
The idea for this new ERG would be to focus “on ending age discrimination and really providing employees 45-plus with the resources that they need to thrive,” Harris said.
The new ERG, dubbed Sages, would be for midlife and older employees, but anyone would be welcome to join. “Ageism is an ‘ism’ that can affect everybody at some point in their life,” Harris said.
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Taylor Glascock for HuffPost
Elizabeth Harris, chief strategy officer at Arc Worldwide, co-founded Sages after she realized existing employee research groups weren’t addressing issues facing older people.
Alma Klein, senior vice president and creative director at Arc Worldwide, was one of the members who joined outside the intended age range. Even though Klein wasn’t necessarily considered older in the workforce, helping older employees become more welcomed and valued within the agency came from an “altruistic and self-interested” place, she said.
“I didn’t see a ton of older employees, specifically older women, in creative roles,” Klein said. “And I feel like it was a bit of self-interest that I wanted to make sure that I could age-proof my career because I wasn’t ready to quit being in advertising.”
After launching, the new Sages group decided that its first programming would be about older women’s health, focusing on menopause. Harris said the organizers initially wondered if an event on menopause would draw a big enough crowd. They consulted with a Sages board member who was in her late 20s and was interested in hearing more on a topic that “nobody talks about,” Harris recalled.
Sages went forward with the forum, inviting two physicians to come speak. “A big part of what they spoke about was menopause. What it is, what it is not, what to expect, the changes that your body goes through and different ways to manage much of the less-than-fun stuff that comes along with it,“ Harris said. Turnout was a success.
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“We actually had a bunch of guys show up because they’re like, ‘I want to understand what my wife is going through,’ so I was super happy and encouraged by it,” Harris said.
Since then, Sages has grown into a business resource group within the umbrella company of Publicis Groupe; ithas over 300 members. Sages events have included film screenings and sessions on retirement planning and caregiving benefits, while its policy branch works to effect broader change such as inclusive interview practices.
And on a basic level, Sages gives members a space where the joys and frustrations of getting older are accepted and not taboo.
Recent topics of discussion on the Sages’ internal chat on Teams have included appreciation for “Grace and Frankie” and “80 for Brady,” advice on how to handle hot flashes ― which Sages members subsequently rebranded as “power surges” ― and a study on the importance of not overlooking consumers over 50.
“There’s power in numbers, and especially in an industry that is very youth-oriented, it’s nice to find some other folks who you have something in common with,” Klein said about the feeling of solidarity Sages offers.
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Taylor Glascock for HuffPost
Alma Klein, Arc Worldwide’s SVP creative director, co-founded Sages.
Age-focused ERGs are still the exception, not the rule.
Employee resource groups have a long history of advocating on behalf of underrepresented groups in corporate America. After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Black employees at Xerox pioneered the first employee resource group in the U.S. in 1970, called the National Black Employees Caucus. The affinity group connected Black Xerox employees across different cities, addressed work discrimination, and identified and advocated for Black employees to get promoted to top management within the company. Computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard is credited with having the first ERG for LGBT employees in 1978.
Now, ERGs focused on women, race and ethnicity, and the LGBTQ+ experience are the most common types of resource groups for employees, according to a 2011 survey of 64 mostly global, for-profit companies ranging from 1,600 to 380,000 employees.
But openly acknowledging age diversity at work and making it the focus of an employee resources group is still rare and novel.
None of the top 10 largest employers in the U.S. have ERGs focused on the experiences of older employees. Theresa Welbourne, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Alabama, told HuffPost that for an upcoming study, she found that only 3% of ERGs out of a sample of 70 different ERG types were dedicated to people of different generations. While the study hasn’t been submitted for review yet, the early findings aren’t surprising.
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“By not speaking about age in the workplace, the needs of older employees go underreported. And consequently, unresolved.”
– Kyra Leigh Sutton, an HR expert in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations
Legal departments may hesitate to approve an age-specific ERG out of fear employees will either learn they are being mistreated or accuse each other of unfair special treatment and sue, said Anna Ettin, who helped launch the Inter-Generational Employee Network at Bank of America when she was a learning consultant there.
“Is this group offering a benefit to one generation or older employees that is not offered to younger employees?” is a question legal departments will want answered, Ettin said.
Kyra Leigh Sutton, an HR expert at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, said that generational ERGs, especially those directed at older workers, are rare because they could lead to members revealing how old they are. And there are risks associated with being seen as older.
“Some employees avoid speaking about age in the workplace, as they don’t want people to think there’s something they can’t do because of their age,” Sutton said. “Unfortunately, by not speaking about age in the workplace, the needs of older employees go underreported. And consequently, unresolved.”
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As Klein put it: “It’s still OK to be ageist in our society.”
“Nobody’s going to cancel you for being an ageist … people get away with it,” she said. “We also have a culture where it’s not OK to say that you’re old.”
Age-focused ERGs help employees in the ‘sandwich generation.’
For the rare companies that do create one, age-focused ERGs offer a number of benefits to employees. One big perk? The better sense of belonging when you learn you’re not the only one who is that age.
AT&T’s Professional 50 Forward ERG was founded in 2014 and has over 4,000 members. Tom Hamrick, the group’s president, said what separates his ERG from others at the company is that members are part of the “sandwich generation”: People in this group often feel sandwiched between taking care of their own children and their aging parents, on top of other life events, he said.
Hamrick said one of Professional 50 Forward’s most popular events has been about retirement and estate planning.
“It was so liberating. We discussed things together that we never discussed before.”
– Karen Weiss, who helped launch Intuit Silver Network
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For Sages board member Chandra Panley, who is the senior vice president of operations at the Starcom agency, one event that stands out was called “Dude, Where’s My Car?” about how to manage memory loss.
The pitch for interested employees was that “Our memories can be a big part of our identities. Join us for a coaching session where you’re going to learn strategies for being intentional, and how to be patient with ourselves and learn that it’s OK to ask for help,” Panley recalled.
“It was so fun and so interesting, and so well attended,” she added.
When age diversity is recognized, generational divides in the workplace can become bridges.
It’s now common to work next to someone at the beginning of their career while you are finishing yours. There are as many as five different generations in today’s workplaces, from people born between 1925 and 1942 to those born in the mid-1990s and later, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. And they don’t always understand each other.
That’s why ― in addition to ERGs that focus on the needs of employees of a certain age ― some employers create intergenerational ERGs to help bridge those gaps in work styles and communication.
Ettin, who helped launch the Inter-Generational Employee Network at Bank of America, said the idea began with her researching generational dynamics in 2010 and sending out an email survey to gauge whether employees would be interested in the topic.
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Ettin got a strong response. “It was baby boomers saying, ‘My new manager is the same age as my kid who’s living in my garage apartment. How am I supposed to report to this guy?’ And the millennials are saying, ‘You guys hired me, you know, you got me out of my MBA program … and I’ve been sitting in a cubicle for six months. Nobody cares what I think,’” Ettin said.
“That’s when we’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is an intergenerational issue. … We can’t just do a young employees group, that doesn’t actually serve our employees’ needs,’” she continued.
The Inter-Generational Employee Network launched in 2012 and now has 37,000 members and 33 global chapters at Bank of America. As part of the monthly new member orientation, hires learn about generational diversity from generational ambassadors and employees can take training opportunities about working with people in different life stages.
One powerful benefit to an intergenerational ERG is how it can connect two people with different tenures in an organization, so that it’s a mutual benefit to junior and senior employees, Ettin said.
Take it from Calandra Jarrell and Devan Kane, two Bank of America employees who started working together about a year and a half ago. Jarrell, the senior vice president of diversity and inclusion, is a Gen Xer and Kane, who works closely with Jarrell on her internal communications, is a millennial.
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Courtesy of Calandra Jarrell and Devan Kane
Bank of America employees Calandra Jarrell (left) and Devan Kane (right) said their generational differences have helped them learn from each other.
It was an instant connection. “I immediately started learning from her and picked up on her energy,” Jarrell said. She said she’s learned from Kane about what younger generations want their employers to openly talk about, as well as the power of a “be brief, be bold, be gone” style of communication.
Instead of just texting, Kane will “just meet me where I am and pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, let me talk you through this.’ And then all is right with the world,” Jarrell said.
“One thing my generation can be known for is being kind of super fast and almost reactive,” Kane said. “And what I’ve learned from Calandra, in just the short time we’ve known each other, is to take a deep breath, take a step back and let things almost come to you, which is not my nature.”
It’s a reminder of how age can be a barrier between co-workers, but it doesn’t have to be. It can also be a way to gain a new work friend and ally.
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Here’s why everyone should care about age-focused ERGs.
Ultimately, aging is a life experience that everyone carries with them to work.
At Land O’Lakes’ Aging Successfully ERG, for example, anyone ― from interns to senior employees ― can join. The ERG teaches employees who are just out of college about 401ks and discusses phased retirement with employees interested in transitioning out of the workplace.
“The truth is that we’re all aging,” said Kevin Hoepker, the ERG’s co-lead.
To start your own age-focused ERG, Harris said to make membership inclusive even if the group is tailored for people of a certain age. “You don’t want to just be talking to yourselves,” she said.
When pitching the ERG, point out the value of keeping older workers engaged.
“We bring experience and wisdom and deep knowledge and client relationships. So there’s also a value to the experience and historical knowledge of older workers,” Klein said.
And if that’s not enough, remind bosses of the importance of reaching older customers. “Guess who’s got the deepest pocketbooks and the most spending money? Surprise, it’s people over 50. They hold a dramatic percentage of the wealth in America,” Klein said. “And yet too many brands are hyper-focused on the 18- to 34-year-old brackets.”
It may take some convincing, but it’s not too late to start your own age-focused ERG. You may be surprised by how many people will want to join.
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Just last year in April, Intuit’s Karen Weiss posted a blog about the new Intuit Silver Network she was helping to launch to serve the interests of employees 50 and over.
After her post, she saw the internal channel for the group spike from 40 members to 560. Unprompted, members shared their ages when they joined.
“People were joining, saying, ‘I’m so happy, I finally feel seen and heard at work,’” Weiss recalled. “It was so liberating. We discussed things together that we never discussed before.”
“We’re not squeamish in the Silver Network,” Weiss said about their internal chats. “I presented to the group on the care and death of my elderly parents. And everybody had some aspect of that they related to, whether it was diapers for adults, whether it was dealing with hospice care. We talk about things that are not necessarily happy, but that are important.”
This October, Weiss said the Intuit Silver Network will do weekly one-hour Zoom sessions where members can work on building a legacy document of instructions for loved ones after death “so that by the end of the month, we’ll have it done. And we’ll have the support of each other.”
For decades, fish-eating killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have been observed harassing and even killing porpoises without consuming them — a perplexing behavior that has long intrigued scientists.
A study published today in Marine Mammal Science, co-led by Deborah Giles of Wild Orca and Sarah Teman of the SeaDoc Society, a program of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, looked at more than 60 years of recorded interactions between Southern Resident killer whales and porpoises in the Salish Sea to better understand why they exhibit this behavior.
Southern Resident killer whales are an endangered population, numbering only 75 individuals. Their survival is intimately tied to the fortunes of Chinook salmon — also an endangered species. Without enough Chinook salmon, these whales are in danger of extinction.
“I am frequently asked, why don’t the Southern Residents just eat seals or porpoises instead?” said Giles. “It’s because fish-eating killer whales have a completely different ecology and culture from orcas that eat marine mammals — even though the two populations live in the same waters. So we must conclude that their interactions with porpoises serve a different purpose, but this purpose has only been speculation until now.”
Three plausible explanations
While scientists have recorded instances of Southern Resident killer whales engaging in porpoise harassment as early as 1962, reasons for this behavior have long remained a mystery. Giles, Teman, and a team of collaborators analyzed 78 documented incidents of porpoise harassment from 1962 to 2020. The study suggests three plausible explanations:
Social play: Porpoise harassment may be a form of social play for killer whales. Like many intelligent species, these whales sometimes engage in playful activities to bond, communicate, or simply enjoy themselves. This behavior might benefit group coordination and teamwork.
Hunting practice: Another hypothesis suggests that porpoise harassment might hone their salmon-hunting skills. Southern Resident killer whales could view porpoises as moving targets to practice their hunting techniques, even if they do not intend to consume them.
Mismothering behavior: This theory suggests that the whales may be attempting to provide care for porpoises they perceive as weaker or ill-a manifestation of their natural inclination to assist others in their group. Females have been witnessed carrying their deceased calves and have been seen similarly carrying porpoises.
“Mismothering behavior — also known as ‘displaced epimeletic behavior’ to scientists — might be due to their limited opportunities to care for young,” Giles explained. “Our research has shown that due to malnutrition, nearly 70% of Southern Resident killer whale pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages or calves that died right away after birth.”
Salmon specialists
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Despite these intriguing insights, Giles, Teman, and their collaborators acknowledge that the exact reason behind porpoise harassment may never be fully understood. What is clear, however, is that porpoises are not a part of the Southern Resident killer whale diet. Southern Resident killer whale diets are highly specialized for salmon, making the idea of eating porpoises highly unlikely.
“Killer whales are incredibly complex and intelligent animals. We found that porpoise-harassing behavior has been passed on through generations and across social groupings. It’s an amazing example of killer whale culture,” Teman says. “Still, we don’t expect the Southern Resident killer whales to start eating porpoises. The culture of eating salmon is deeply ingrained in Southern Resident society. These whales need healthy salmon populations to survive.”
This research underscores the importance of conserving salmon populations in the Salish Sea and throughout the whales’ entire range. Maintaining an adequate supply of salmon is vital for the survival and well-being of Southern Resident killer whales and the overall health of the Salish Sea ecosystem.
Affinity for play
This study comes at a time when a separate population of killer whales on the Iberian Peninsula has drawn international headlines for interacting with, and on three occasions, sinking boats off the coast of Portugal and Spain. Ultimately, the Southern Resident killer whales and the Iberian Peninsula orcas are two different populations with distinct cultures. One thing the two might have in common is their affinity for play behavior.
The study was funded by Wild Orca and SeaDoc Society. Additional partners include the University of Exeter, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Orca Behavior Institute, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Cascadia Research, The Whale Museum, Center for Whale Research, Ocean Research College Academy (ORCA) at Everett Community College, Bay Cetology, North Gulf Oceanic Society, George Mason University, and Marine-Med.
