Light Humor in the Workplace is Good Thing, Says MU business Professor

It is commonly believed that kidding around at work isn’t a good thing. Well, it is, says a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher, who has examined how workplace humor affects the working environment.

Chris Robert, assistant professor of management in MU’s Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, says that humor – particularly joking around about things associated with the job – actually has a positive impact in the workplace. Occasional humor among colleagues, he says, enhances creativity, department cohesiveness and overall performance. The conclusion was made by examining theories on humor and integrating literature from a wide variety of disciplines that touch on the subject. Several hundred sources were analyzed by Robert and collaborator Wan Yan, a business doctoral student, who have attempted to bring together literature from numerous disciplines to make the case that humor is serious business.

“Humor has a significant impact in organizations,” says Robert, who also teaches psychology in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “Humor isn’t incompatible with goals of the workplace. It’s not incompatible with the organization’s desire to be competitive. In fact, we argue that humor is pretty important. It’s not just clowning around and having fun; it has meaningful impact on cohesiveness in the workplace and communication quality among workers. The ability to appreciate humor, the ability to laugh and make other people laugh actually has physiological effects on the body that cause people to become more bonded.”

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

The New Wildlife Refuge: Golf Courses?

Golf courses are known as centers for human recreation, but if managed properly, they also could be important wildlife sanctuaries, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has found.
"There are more than 17,000 golf courses in the United States, and approximately 70 percent of that land is not used for playing," says Ray Semlitsch, Curators' Professor of Biology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "These managed green spaces aren't surrogates for protected land and ecosystems, but they can include suitable habitat for species native to the area. Golf courses could act as nature sanctuaries if managed properly."

Semlitsch, along with Michelle Boone, an assistant professor at Miami University in Ohio and former MU graduate student, and J. Russell Bodie, senior scientist for Audubon International, outlined recommendations that would improve golf course habitats for amphibian populations in a paper published in USGA Turfgrass and Environmental Research Online in January. Their recommendations included buffering aquatic habitats from chemical runoff, surrounding wetland areas with 150 to 300 meters of forest or natural grassland, and creating a diversity of pond types that mimic natural wetlands.

A recent study by Semlitsch, Boone and Cory Mosby, a senior at MU, built on these suggestions. They found that completely drying golf course ponds in the late summer or early fall would benefit amphibian populations and biodiversity.

"It's a hard concept for people to understand, but non-permanent wetlands are more natural than permanent wetlands. Most natural wetlands dry for some periods of time, and the species that live in them are well-adapted for this. The natural drying process benefits amphibians, and it releases nutrients from the soil. Maintaining permanent ponds actually harms biodiversity," Semlitsch said.

In the study, the researchers used two types of ponds -- control reference ponds and ponds located on golf courses -- to monitor populations of American toads, southern leopard frogs and spotted salamanders. They found that the American toads, southern leopard frogs and spotted salamanders survived better in the golf course ponds than in the control ponds, probably because of a reduced number of insect predators. They also found that these species survived better in the absence of overwintered bullfrog tadpoles, which are common to permanent golf course ponds and act as unnatural predators and competitors.

Semlitsch said this shows that greater biodiversity can be achieved by eliminating bullfrog tadpoles. Because bullfrog cycles of metamorphosis take longer to complete (typically 12 months) than the cycles of other amphibians (typically one to four months), the bullfrog tadpoles have advantages in permanent ponds and can grow larger and more powerful, nudging out other species. By drying golf course ponds in the early fall, the tadpoles can be eliminated,

Semlitsch, Boone and Mosby's study will be published later this year in the journal Conservation Biology. It was supported by the United States Golf Association and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

From Farm Waste to Fuel Tanks

Using corncob waste as a starting material, researchers have created carbon briquettes with complex nanopores capable of storing natural gas at an unprecedented density of 180 times their own volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional natural gas tanks.

The breakthrough, announced today in Kansas City, Mo., is a significant step forward in the nationwide effort to fit more automobiles to run on methane, an abundant fuel that is domestically produced and cleaner burning than gasoline.

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for Innovation program, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) and Midwest Research Institute (MRI) in Kansas City developed the technology. The technology has been incorporated into a test bed installed on a pickup truck used regularly by the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality.

The briquettes are the first technology to meet the 180 to 1 storage to volume target set by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2000, a long-term goal of principal project leader Peter Pfeifer of MU.

"We are very excited about this breakthrough because it may lead to a flat and compact tank that would fit under the floor of a passenger car, similar to current gasoline tanks," says Pfeifer. "Such a technology would make natural gas a widely attractive alternative fuel for everyone."

According to Pfeifer, the absence of such a flatbed tank has been the principal reason why natural gas, which costs significantly less than gasoline and diesel and burns more cleanly, is not yet widely used as a fuel for vehicles.

In 2004, U.S. net imports of natural gas represented only 15 percent of the total amount used, with almost all imports coming from Canada.

The national average cost of compressed natural gas (CNG) was 94 cents cheaper than gasoline on an energy-equivalent basis, according the Clean Cities Alternative Fuel Price Report in June 2006. Gasoline was $2.84 per gallon, diesel was $2.98 per gallon, and CNG was $1.90 per gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE).

Standard natural gas storage systems use high-pressure natural gas that has been compressed to a pressure of 3600 pounds per square inch and bulky tanks that can take up the space of an entire car trunk. The carbon briquettes contain networks of pores and channels that can hold methane at a high density without the cost of extreme compression, ultimately storing the fuel at a pressure of only 500 pounds per square inch, the pressure found in natural gas pipelines.

The low pressure of 500 pounds per square inch is central for crafting the tank into any desired shape, so ultimately, fuel storage tanks could be thin-walled, slim, rectangular structures affixed to the underside of the car, not taking up room in the vehicle.

Pfeifer and his colleagues at MU and MRI discovered that that fractal pore spaces (spaces created by repetition of similar patterns at different scales) are remarkably efficient at storing natural gas.

"Our project is the first time a carbon storage material has been made from corncobs, an abundantly available waste product in the Midwest," says Pfeifer. "The carbon briquettes are made from the cobs that remain after the kernels have been harvested. The state of Missouri alone could supply the raw material for more than 10 million cars per year. It would be a unique opportunity to bring corn to the market for alternative fuels--corn kernels for ethanol production, and corncob for natural gas tanks."

As municipal solid waste decomposes, it produces carbon dioxide and methane. That methane, the principal component of natural gas, can be captured by landfill gas energy facilities and combusted for energy.

The test pickup truck, part of a fleet of more than 200 natural gas vehicles operated by Kansas City, has been in use since mid-October and the researchers are monitoring the technology's performance, from mileage data to measurements of the stability of the briquettes.

In addition to efforts to commercialize the technology, the researchers are now focusing on the next generation briquette, one that will store more natural gas and cost less to produce. Pfeifer believes this next generation of briquette might even hold promise for storing hydrogen.

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Feds Fund Research on 'Economically Important Plants'

Scientists will find improved ways of studying the structure, function and evolution of the genomes of economically important plants, thanks to $14 million in new awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

Resources to be developed include genomic sequences, genetic markers, maps and expressed sequence collections. These are much-needed tools for researchers working in areas as diverse as genome evolution and plant breeding.

Awardees will address scientific questions including the role of polyploidy in genome evolution, the genomic basis of speciation, and the relationships between cultivated plants and their weedy relatives.

"If the Plant Genome Research Program has been making the bricks that build a conceptual framework for the genomes of economically important crop plants, these projects will provide the mortar," says James Collins, NSF assistant director for biological sciences. "The impact of genomics in evolutionary, ecological and population studies of crop plants will be far-reaching."

Many crop plants have large, complex genomes that in some cases are "polyploid" -- containing multiple genomes. Polyploidy is widespread in plants and animals, and can lead to dramatic changes in gene content and genome organization that are only just beginning to be understood.
A project led by researchers at Iowa State University will develop sequence and map resources to study polyploidy in cotton, while researchers at the University of Missouri will look at the impact of polyploidy on plant form in Brassica species, which includes plants such as canola and Brussels sprouts. Other projects at the University of Georgia and the University of Arizona will develop sequence resources to study genome organization in wheat and rice.

The outcomes from these projects will allow researchers to understand how extra copies of genes function in these plants, and how genomes from different sources can work together in a single plant.

The ever-growing collection of genome sequences is shedding light on the variation between individuals within a species. For example, in a forest of trees or a field of corn, there may be many versions of a particular gene, each with minor sequence differences. These sequence differences can sometimes have dramatic effects on growth and development.

Projects based at the University of California at Davis and Cornell University will catalog variants in pine trees and in maize, respectively, to allow researchers to link genetic variation with changes in gene function. This information could have applications in plant breeding.
More than half of the world's most cultivated crops have relatives that are invasive weeds, competing with the crop for nutrients and water and leading to reduced yields.

One example is red rice, a weedy form of rice that reduces the yields of cultivated rice by as much as 80 percent and contaminating harvests with its small red-coated grains. A project led by researchers at Washington University St. Louis will examine the regions of the red rice genome associated with weediness to find out whether it originated from the domesticated crop or if it was introduced as a weed from Asia.

A related project led by investigators at Michigan State University will investigate differences in gene expression in weedy and cultivated radishes to uncover which genes are associated with invasiveness.The outcomes of these projects could lead to a great understanding of how plants become weedy and invasive, and yield possible avenues for better selective control of weeds, scientists believe.

"The outcomes of this new program will tie together studies of the evolution of gene structure, function and regulation across the whole plant kingdom," says Collins.

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Enter your Email





Preview Powered by FeedBlitz