The Brain in Business: The Case for Organisational Cognitive Neuroscience?

The application of cognitive neuroscientific techniques to understanding social behaviour has resulted in many discoveries. Yet advocates of the ‘social cognitive neuroscience’ approach maintain that it suffers from a number of limitations. The most notable of these is its distance from any form of real-world applicability. One solution to this limitation is ‘Organisational Cognitive Neuroscience’ – the study of the cognitive neuroscience of human behaviour in, and in response to, organizations. Given that all of us will spend most of our lives in some sort of work related organisation, organisational cognitive neuroscience allows us to examine the cognitive underpinnings of social behaviour that occurs in what may be our most natural ecology. Here we provide a brief overview of this approach, a definition and also some possible questions that the new approach would be best suited to address

The reaction Cl + H2CO yields HCl + HCO: Decreased sensitivity of stratospheric ozone to chlorine perturbations

The absolute rate constant for the reaction Cl + H2CO yields HCl + HCO was determined by the flash-photolysis resonance fluorescence method to be 7.5 plus or minus 0.9 (2 sigma) times 10 to the minus 11th power cu cm/molecule sec at 298 K and to have a negligible temperature dependence. This rate which is more than 2000 times faster than the rate of Cl + CH4 indicates that formaldehyde (H2CO) will compete significantly with methane (CH4) for the conversion of active chlorine in the stratosphere to the inactive reservoir HCl. Chlorine will thus be a less efficient destroyer of stratosphere ozone than previously believed. Ambient stratospheric ozone will depend less on the ambient chlorine amount and the predicted response to chlorine perturbations will be lessened. One-dimensional eddy-diffusion photochemical model calculations indicate a factor of 1.1 less sensitivity to chlorine than recently reported. For a steady-state CFM release at 1975 rates (750,000 tons/year) the eventual ozone depletion is now calculated to be 14%

Crossing the Brown Dwarf Desert Using Adaptive Optics: A Very Close L-Dwarf Companion to the Nearby Solar Analog HR 7672

We have found a very faint companion to the active solar analog HR 7672 (HD 190406; GJ 779; 15 Sge). Three epochs of high resolution imaging using adaptive optics (AO) at the Gemini-North and Keck II Telescopes demonstrate that HR 7672B is a common proper motion companion, with a separation of 0.79" (14 AU) and a 2.16 um flux ratio of 8.6 mags. Using follow-up K-band spectroscopy from Keck AO+NIRSPEC, we measure a spectral type of L4.5+/-1.5. This is the closest ultracool companion around a main sequence star found to date by direct imaging. We estimate the primary has an age of 1-3 Gyr. Assuming coevality, the companion is most likely substellar, with a mass of 55-78 Mjup based on theoretical models. The primary star shows a long-term radial velocity trend, and we combine the radial velocity data and AO imaging to set a firm (model-independent) lower limit of 48 Mjup. In contrast to the paucity of brown dwarf companions at <~4 AU around FGK dwarfs, HR 7672B implies that brown dwarf companions do exist at separations comparable to those of the giant planets in our own solar system. Its presence is at variance with scenarios where brown dwarfs form as ejected stellar embryos. Moreover, since HR 7672B is likely too massive to have formed in a circumstellar disk as planets are believed to, its discovery suggests that a diversity of physical processes act to populate the outer regions of exoplanetary systems.Comment: Astrophysical Journal, in pres

Eating increases oxidative damage in a reptile

While eating has substantial benefits in terms of both nutrient and energy acquisition, there are physiological costs associated with digesting and metabolizing a meal. Frequently, these costs have been documented in the context of energy expenditure while other physiological costs have been relatively unexplored. Here, we tested whether the seemingly innocuous act of eating affects either systemic pro-oxidant (reactive oxygen metabolite, ROM) levels or antioxidant capacity of corn snakes (Pantherophis guttatus) by collecting plasma during absorptive (peak increase in metabolic rate due to digestion of a meal) and non-absorptive (baseline) states. When individuals were digesting a meal, there was a minimal increase in antioxidant capacity relative to baseline (4%), but a substantial increase in ROMs (nearly 155%), even when controlling for circulating nutrient levels. We report an oxidative cost of eating that is much greater than that due to long distance flight or mounting an immune response in other taxa. This result demonstrates the importance of investigating non-energetic costs associated with meal processing, and it begs future work to identify the mechanism(s) driving this increase in ROM levels. Because energetic costs associated with eating are taxonomically widespread, identifying the taxonomic breadth of eating-induced ROM increases may provide insights into the interplay between oxidative damage and life history theory

Call Me Caitlyn: Making and making over the 'authentic' transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this 'wrong body' paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain

The continuum limit in the quenched approximation

Previous work at $6/g^2=5.7$ with quenched staggered quarks is extended with new calculations at 5.85 and 6.15 on lattices up to $32^3\times 64$. These calculations allow a more detailed study of extrapolation in quark mass, finite volume and lattice spacing than has heretofore been possible. We discuss how closely the quenched spectrum approaches that of the real world.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript, contribution to Lattice '9

Effect of Oral Iron Repletion on Exercise Capacity in Patients With Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction and Iron Deficiency: The IRONOUT HF Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Iron deficiency is present in approximately 50% of patients with heart failure with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HFrEF) and is an independent predictor of reduced functional capacity and mortality. However, the efficacy of inexpensive readily available oral iron supplementation in heart failure is unknown. Objective: To test whether therapy with oral iron improves peak exercise capacity in patients with HFrEF and iron deficiency. Design, Setting, and Participants: Phase 2, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial of patients with HFrEF ( Interventions: Oral iron polysaccharide (n = 111) or placebo (n = 114), 150 mg twice daily for 16 weeks. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was a change in peak oxygen uptake (V̇o2) from baseline to 16 weeks. Secondary end points were change in 6-minute walk distance, plasma N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels, and health status as assessed by Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ, range 0-100, higher scores reflect better quality of life). Results: Among 225 randomized participants (median age, 63 years; 36% women) 203 completed the study. The median baseline peak V̇o2 was 1196 mL/min (interquartile range [IQR], 887-1448 mL/min) in the oral iron group and 1167 mL/min (IQR, 887-1449 mL/min) in the placebo group. The primary end point, change in peak V̇o2 at 16 weeks, did not significantly differ between the oral iron and placebo groups (+23 mL/min vs -2 mL/min; difference, 21 mL/min [95% CI, -34 to +76 mL/min]; P = .46). Similarly, at 16 weeks, there were no significant differences between treatment groups in changes in 6-minute walk distance (-13 m; 95% CI, -32 to 6 m), NT-proBNP levels (159; 95% CI, -280 to 599 pg/mL), or KCCQ score (1; 95% CI, -2.4 to 4.4), all P \u3e .05. Conclusions and Relevance: Among participants with HFrEF with iron deficiency, high-dose oral iron did not improve exercise capacity over 16 weeks. These results do not support use of oral iron supplementation in patients with HFrEF. Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02188784

Soil osmotic potential and its effect on vapor flow from a pervaporative irrigation membrane

Pervaporative irrigation is a membrane technology that can be used for desalination and subsurface irrigation simultaneously. To irrigate, the tube-shaped polymer membrane is buried in soil and filled with water. Due to the membrane transport process, water enters the soil in vapor phase, drawn across the membrane when the relative humidity in the air-filled pores is low. Soils are typically humid environments, however, the presence of hygroscopic compounds such as fertilisers decreases the humidity. For example, at 20oC the humidity in air in equilibrium above a saturated ammonium nitrate solution is 63%. Here, experiments showed that the presence of fertilisers in sand increased the water flux across the membrane by an order of magnitude. An expression for vapor sorption into sand containing different hygroscopic compounds was developed and combined with a model of vapor and liquid flow in soil. The success of the model in simulating experimental results suggests that the proposed mechanism, adsorption of moisture from the vapor phase by hygroscopic compounds, explains the observed increase in the flux from the irrigation system