“Scientists are using sound to track how sharks migrate and the animals they encounter”

Image credit: Danielle Haulsee

Emily DeMarco of Inside Science reports that researchers from the the University of Delaware are fitting Delaware Bay tiger sharks with devices to track them during their southward migration. These researchers are interested in, not just where they go, but how the sharks interact with each other and other animals during their long swim.

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“This Chart Shows Who Marries CEOs, Doctors, Chefs and Janitors”

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 10.31.24 AMAdam Pearce and Dorothy Gambrell of Bloomberg Buisiness scanned data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey to maps the most common professional pairings across 3.5 million households. Their interactive highlights the five most common occupation/relationship matchups as well as the top male-male and female-female job matchups for each occupation within 435 professional silos.… Read the rest

“German Forest Ranger Finds That Trees Have Social Networks, Too”

“When I say, ‘Trees suckle their children,’ everyone knows immediately what I mean.” PETER WOHLLEBEN GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

“When I say, ‘Trees suckle their children,’ everyone knows immediately what I mean.” PETER WOHLLEBEN GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A recent New York Times article by Sally McGrane discusses the ecology put forth by German forester Peter Wohlleben in his recent book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries From a Secret World.… Read the rest

“Social networks as important as exercise and diet across the span of our lives”

^2BC254384C1A7E69E756EB9EBC068CB16622EA552561C8F4AC^pimgpsh_fullsize_distrThe more social ties people have at an early age, the better their health is at the beginnings and ends of their lives, according to a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study is the first to definitively link social relationships with concrete measures of physical wellbeing such as abdominal obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure, all of which can lead to long-term health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cancer.… Read the rest

“Mapping cancer’s ‘social networks’ opens new approaches to treatment”

lab-2_0Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research(link is external), London, compared proteins inside cells to members of an enormous social network, mapping the ways they interact. This allowed them to predict which proteins will be most effectively targeted with drugs.The team found that there are many molecular pathways that interact to affect the development of cancer.… Read the rest

“Like air traffic, information flows through major neuron ‘hubs’ in the brain, IU scientists find”

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Non-gray circles and their connections represent 80, 70 and 60 percent (from top to bottom) of all outgoing traffic within the sampled section of a cortical region. | Photo by Indiana University

This article published by Indiana University Bloomington describes a new study one of its researchers has published in the journal Neuroscience, drawing a close analogy between airline routes and the neuronal network in our brain.

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“First, Let’s Get Rid of All the Bosses”

e06d7de9be807b8c8e1ab4665d762e69ce6e87deRodger D. Hodge of the New Republic reports on CEO Tony Hsieh’s recent decision to shift Zappo’s to the Evolutionary Teal style of management through HolacracyThis hotly discussed new approach discards static, hierarchical power structures for more distributed and plastic forms of leadership. As defined by Frederic Laloux in Reinventing OrganizationsEvolutionary Teal organizations “trust in the abundance of life” and focus on self-actualization rather than material goals.… Read the rest