Sustainability: Reusing Data Center Waste Heat

Data Centers are facilities used to house a large number of computer systems and their associated components, such as telecommunications and data storage systems. Nowadays many organizations depend on the reliable operation of their data centers for their day to day business operations. Data centers are designed with redundant and backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, robust cybersecurity protocols and very strict environmental controls. The many computer systems held in a typical data center generate large heat loads that need to be continuously removed with high grade air conditioning systems. Anthem currently owns a large corporate data center in Richmond that generates a large amount of waste heat that is currently dissipated into the environment. The objective of this project is to design a system that will help Anthem reuse some or most of the waste heat generated by the data center, possibly using it to heat the adjoining office building. The proposed system would not only reduce Anthem’s energy costs to heat the office building but it would decrease Anthem’s overall environmental footprint. The solution that the team decided upon is to add a second condenser bundle to an already existing centrifugal chiller. This would allow for a higher-grade heat to be produced. This hot water would then be piped to a coil within the make-up air handler units and the outside air that would normally be heated by natural gas will now be heated by the hot water. The air passing through the coil would now be hot usable air and thus able to be distributed throughout the building.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1128/thumbnail.jp

Oxytocin increases emotional theory of mind, but only for low socioeconomic status individuals.

Studies have linked oxytocin to emotional theory of mind (eToM) - the ability to recognise and understand others' emotions. However, multiple replications have so far failed to reach a consistent result. Growing evidence suggests that oxytocin's positive effects on social-emotional tasks such as eToM are highly dependent on trait-level individual differences. In the present study, we theorised that socioeconomic status (SES) could influence oxytocin's impact on emotional mentalising processes. We tested our hypothesis in a double-blind between-subjects oxytocin nasal spray study on 147 Caucasian white male participants in the United Kingdom. In accordance with our hypothesis, we found that oxytocin (as compared to placebo) did boost emotional theory of mind, but only in people from low subjective SES backgrounds. Our results expand existing theory on how individual differences moderate oxytocin's role on social behaviours

Caring helps: trait empathy is related to better coping strategies and differs in the poor versus the rich

Coping has been extensively studied in health psychology; however, factors influencing the usage of different coping strategies have received limited attention. In five studies (N = 3702), we explored the relationship between trait empathy and coping strategies, and how subjective socioeconomic status (SES) moderates this relationship. In Studies 1–4, we found that people with higher level of empathic concern use more adaptive coping strategies, seek more social support, and use fewer maladaptive coping strategies. Moreover, higher trait empathy related to more adaptive coping strategies among the poor, and fewer maladaptive coping strategies among the rich. In Study 5, we tested the potential biological basis of the relationship between trait empathy and coping by examining the effect of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) rs53576 polymorphism on coping. We found that individuals with the GG phenotype—who in previous research have been found to be more empathic—were more likely to seek social support than AG or AA individuals. Furthermore, in line with findings in Studies 1–4, amongst people with low SES, individuals with GG genotype used more adaptive coping strategies than AG or AA individuals. Our results highlight the selective role trait empathy plays in influencing coping strategy deployment, depending on the SES of individuals

Hot Yoga Leads to Greater Well-being: A Six-week Experience-sampling RCT in Healthy Adults

Practicing hot yoga may bring significant psychological benefits, but it is largely unstudied. We examined the effects of hot yoga on multifaceted well-being indicators with 290 healthy yoga-naïve volunteers partaking in a six-week randomized controlled trial. Participants completed questionnaires pre- and post-intervention, and reported their emotional experiences four times per day throughout an experience-sampling study. Results revealed that the hot yoga group (n = 137) improved their well-being from pre- to post-treatment, comparing to the wait-list control group (n = 153). These improvements included life satisfaction, general health, mindfulness, peace of mind, and eudaimonic well-being (ΔR2 ranging from .01 to .08)—but not flourishing, which describes major aspects of social-psychological functioning. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that momentary positive emotional experiences increased significantly throughout the trial in the yoga group only (conditional R2 = .68), particularly when attending a yoga class (conditional R2 = .50). Interestingly, this increase in momentary positive emotion explained the improvement in post-intervention mindfulness, peace of mind, and general health by 21%, 31%, and 11%, respectively. Finally, the benefits of hot yoga were more notable in individuals with lower levels of baseline eudaimonic well-being (conditional R2 = 0.45), flourishing (conditional R2 = 0.61), and mental well-being (conditional R2 = 0.65), even after ruling out any possible ceiling effects. To sum up, this study demonstrated multiple psychological benefits of hot yoga and its potential to be an effective positive psychology intervention. Future research—especially considering an active control group—is warranted

The role of oxytocin in the facial mimicry of affiliative vs. non-affiliative emotions.

The present paper builds upon a growing body of work documenting oxytocin's role in social functioning, to test whether this hormone facilitates spontaneous mimicry of others' emotional expressions. In a double-blind, randomized trial, adult Caucasian males (n = 145) received a nasal spray of either oxytocin or placebo before completing a facial mimicry task. Facial expressions were coded using automated face analysis. Oxytocin increased mimicry of facial features of sadness (lips and chin, but not areas around the eyes), an affiliative reaction that facilitates social bonding. Oxytocin also increased mimicry of happiness, but only for individuals who expressed low levels of happiness in response to neutral faces. Overall, participants did not reliably mimic expressions of fear and anger, echoing recent theoretical accounts of emotional mimicry as dependent on the social context. In sum, our findings suggest that oxytocin facilitates emotional mimicry in ways that are conducive to affiliation, pointing to a possible pathway through which oxytocin promotes social bonding

The Social Significance of Spirituality: New Perspectives on the Compassion-Altruism Relationship

In the current research we tested a comprehensive model of spirituality, religiosity, compassion, and altruism, investigating the independent effects of spirituality and religiosity on compassion and altruism. We hypothesized that, even though spirituality and religiosity are closely related, spirituality and religiosity would have different and unique associations with compassion and altruism. In Study 1 and 2 we documented that more spiritual individuals experience and show greater compassion. The link between religiosity and compassion was no longer significant after controlling for the impact of spirituality. Compassion has the capacity to motivate people to transcend selfish motives and act altruistically towards strangers. Therefore, we reasoned that spirituality (but not religiosity) would predict altruistic behavior and that compassion would help explain this link. Indeed, in Studies 3, 4, and 5 we found that more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically in economic choice and decision-making tasks, and that the tendency of spiritual individuals to feel greater compassion mediated the spirituality-to-altruism relationship. In contrast, more religious participants did not consistently feel more compassion nor behave more altruistically. Moreover, in Studies 3 and 4 we found that the broader traits of Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion did not help explain why more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically. Our findings argue that spirituality—above and beyond religiosity—is uniquely associated with greater compassion and enhanced altruism towards strangers.Keywords: altruism, behavioral economics, religion, spirituality, compassio

Physiological Correlates of Volunteering

We review research on physiological correlates of volunteering, a neglected but promising research field. Some of these correlates seem to be causal factors influencing volunteering. Volunteers tend to have better physical health, both self-reported and expert-assessed, better mental health, and perform better on cognitive tasks. Research thus far has rarely examined neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, and genetic correlates of volunteering to any significant extent, especially controlling for other factors as potential confounds. Evolutionary theory and behavioral genetic research suggest the importance of such physiological factors in humans. Basically, many aspects of social relationships and social activities have effects on health (e.g., Newman and Roberts 2013; Uchino 2004), as the widely used biopsychosocial (BPS) model suggests (Institute of Medicine 2001). Studies of formal volunteering (FV), charitable giving, and altruistic behavior suggest that physiological characteristics are related to volunteering, including specific genes (such as oxytocin receptor [OXTR] genes, Arginine vasopressin receptor [AVPR] genes, dopamine D4 receptor [DRD4] genes, and 5-HTTLPR). We recommend that future research on physiological factors be extended to non-Western populations, focusing specifically on volunteering, and differentiating between different forms and types of volunteering and civic participation