Swift transitions

All around me, things are rapidly changing. At the office, we are adjusting the internal layout. The overall intent is to support a "flexible workspace". At home, the boys seem to be on a constantly fluid path. In the US, we are in the midst of the most unpredictable presidential primary season in my lifetime. It seems that the candidates are constantly bobbing and weaving as their popularity and perceived strength ebbs and flows. Even the world stage seems to flit from day to day.

I think the biggest difference in the world today versus the world of even just a few years ago is the rapid pace of change. It seems that we are accelerating into the future. Where it might have once taken months for something to wear out its welcome, it seems our shortened attention spans have condensed that to weeks. Blockbusters that used to dominate the cultural imagination are no longer suns. They have faded into meteors that streak across the sky and fade out quickly.

Given the pace of technological development, I suspect that this trend will only pick up over time. I shudder to think what a few more years might reveal. At the same time, it doesn't seem like there is any other choice but to bravely face the future.

Cultivating behavior

An interesting article in the Atlantic discusses parenting. The basic idea is that punishment does not actually mold proper behavior.

"Not so, says Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center. Punishment might make you feel better, but it won’t change the kid’s behavior. Instead, he advocates for a radical technique in which parents positively reinforce the behavior they do want to see until the negative behavior eventually goes away."

Kazdin recommends a three-part approach.

What it amounts to is an area of research that's called applied behavior analysis, and what it focuses on are three things to change behavior: What comes before the behavior, how you craft the behavior, and then what you do at the end.

....

And now the behavior itself. When you get compliance, if that's the behavior you want, now you go over and praise it ... very effusively, and you have to say what you're praising exactly.


Based on his experience, Kazdin believes that this can work even on teens.

The basic fundamental approach is, what is going on before the behavior that you can do to change it? Can you get repeated practice trials? Can you lock it in with praise? What happens is that parents think of discipline as punishing, and in fact, that's not the way to change behavior.

This works for all ages. Let’s say you have an adolescent daughter and she says to you, “Mom, you are such a bitch. What have you ever done for me? You only think of yourself.”

That makes parents want to jump out of their windows, because their whole life has been devoted to that damn child. So how do we get rid of teen attitude? We call it positive opposites: Whenever you want to get rid of something, what is it that you want in its place? Because getting rid of it is not going to do it.

....

You proceed from easy to more complex behaviors, and soon you have Marion outside the dinner table, staying nice things. We train parents to jump on those occasions that will build it up, and pretty soon you don't get the, “you're a bitch,” anymore, you build positive opposites. You don't try to suppress— “Don't give me attitude for all I've done for you!” What research shows is that it will lead to escape behavior on the part of the child. It will lead them to avoid you as soon as they get home from school and it will model negative interactions toward you.

One interesting idea:  you should always give a choice. The choice itself isn't important, it's simply the appearance of choice that makes the difference.

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/no-spanking-no-time-out-no-problems/475440/

You can't play tennis with a bowling ball

On my trip last week, I was in a row of three on the aisle. The person in the middle was planning to give a talk while the person at the window seemed to be a more experienced fellow. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but they were being so passionate that I couldn't help but overhear the advice.

One particular line struck me and I felt that I had to write it down. These gentlemen both work in information technology. Perhaps the most difficult task for any IT organization is to tamp down the expectations coming from the business for the latest technological marvel. While it may be true that Google can develop an artificial intelligence that can beat the world's best human player at the game of Go or that FedEx can track a package shipped across the country at any transfer point along the way, those facts obscure the heavy investment both companies made in getting their computer systems to perfect those business tasks. Without a major commitment from executive levels, these types of miracles do not occur.

In that spirit, the senior partner shared a favorite line that he cribbed from a VP he knew. The company was attempting to manipulate one of their computer systems to achieve a result that would be improbable at best. Her expression was, "You can't play tennis with a bowling ball."

I thought it was a marvelous image to share.

So long, farewell....

This is a continuation from a post on my internal company site. This is an extension of my last blog post on our old social media site. Unfortunately, IT has not yet been able to combine the networks between the different parts of our organization. That means that the new social media site is not yet accessible to my part of the company. As a result, I'll be "homeless" for a little while.

If you are like me, I'm sure you have certain habits. Blogging has become one for me. I've been trying to keep a steady stream of posts. At first, it was an attempt to keep seeding our social media site with content in the hopes that a community could develop. Later, it was actually for me to catalog interesting facts. Still later, I found that it forced me to keep trying to learn. I've actually found it useful because I can connect items that aren't obviously related at first glance.

I'm going to keep on posting on my personal blog. It likely won't be the same--especially because I will be quite careful about keeping any proprietary information out of the public eye. Still, I hope that you'll join me every now and again for part of the journey. Perhaps you can even post a comment or two to let me know that you are out there!

Small details can make a big difference

On my flight to Minneapolis yesterday, I noticed a small detail on the 737 that actually made a difference. Mid-flight, I looked at the bathroom door and it seemed as if it wasn't closed fully. Normally, the folding doors close flat. Besides being difficult to open (they never seem to flex the way they should and the awkward movement of trying to slide it while it folds usually takes longer than it should), they also help to make you feel like a sardine smashed into a tiny tin. Here is a photo of the door:

See how it bows out at the top? The entire door is curved. If you have ever been in a hotel where they have the curved shower curtain rod that bends outward, it's a similar effect. That little bend allows them to put a real hinge on the door so it opens like you expect a door to do. It also give you a tiny bit more space that feels like more than it really is when you are inside. There is also a slight curve in the wall that starts at about your chest and goes to the ceiling. It isn't a lot of space, but it helps give the illusion of much more.

It's often those little details that no one notices that can make an enormous difference!

Our thinking on this may have changed

Does drinking flat ginger ale help calm an upset stomach?

Here is some of the latest research:

http://www.statnews.com/2016/03/21/boddities-upset-stomach/

End of the innocence

Yesterday was the first real confirmation. We had suspected it was coming, and it had already arrived.

As we were getting into the car to go to the Pinewood Derby, we were talking about Easter. My youngest has already said that Easter is his favorite holiday because of the baskets filled with candy and gifts. We said that maybe since the boys were still working their way through their Halloween candy, we should tell the Easter Bunny to pass our house by this year. We got some half-hearted resistance and we went on our way.

Once we had arrived at Bass Pro Shops for the event, we started out of the car. I guess my wife overheard the boys talking. Apparently, my oldest said, "You know there's no Easter Bunny, right?" "I know," replied his brother. I don't know whether or not he did, but at this point the illusion was completely undone.

The seeds of this revelation were probably planted in the months before. Earlier in the year, the older brother lost a tooth. There was some confusion over whether or not he was going to put it under his pillow. In that haze, the communication between his parents misfired and the Tooth Fairy conveniently missed her scheduled pickup that night. If there was skepticism going into the evening, it was a raging fire of disbelief by morning. The Tooth Fairy tried to cover with a note saying "You may not believe in me, but I believe in you." Too little, too late.

A few weeks later, little brother lost a tooth. This time, we were more prepared and planned for the regular extraction. We put the kids to bed as normal and thought that they were fast asleep. My wife left a dollar on the stairs as a reminder to herself. Older brother suddenly burst from the room and went to the bathroom. On the way, he spotted the dollar on the stairs and knew instantly what it was for. The Tooth Fairy had breathed her last in our household--never to be seen again.

I am not sure if it was the next day, but my wife eventually showed the boys all of the teeth that she had dutifully collected over the years. I suppose it was inevitable at that point to make the connection between one mysterious figure to all of the other childhood wonders.

A part of me finds this bittersweet. At some point, the boys were going to grow up. One of those requirements involves shedding the simple fictions that mask more complex dynamics. At the same time, this progression also reminds me that they are both a little closer towards losing the innocence and purity of childhood. It's a virtual rite of passage and it only seems to be accelerating.

8 packing tips for your carry-on

Wired featured an article today with eight tips for better packing for your carry-on bag.

Here are two of the tips I found most useful:

Picture Me Rollin’

Stop folding your clothes. Rolling everything and slotting it vertically into your carry-on will earn you gobs of space, and it’ll keep your shirts from wrinkling too. This isn’t a lifehack; this is a must.

Do the Math

Pack everything you think you need, then get rid of half of it. If that feels extreme, try this: For every three days, bring two tops and one pair of pants. Undies and socks for every day, though.

You can find the rest of the tips here: http://www.wired.com/2016/03/how-to-pack-travel-tips/

Wish I had thought of that

Last night, I put together a large piece of fitness equipment for the basement. To save on shipping, some final assembly was required. Normally, this type of project can be daunting. In this case, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how quickly it came together. Much of that can be tied to the quality of instruction.

Build-it-yourself projects can be quite a variable proposition. Done correctly, you can actually save a lot of money. Ikea built an entire business based on the model! That rosy picture only works when you have solid instructions. There are few things in life more frustrating than trying to assemble a project with terrible instructions. Since these projects often involve delivery from foreign countries where English is not the first language, the overall quality of instructions can often range from poor to miserable.

One example of miserable instructions came when I had to put a bike together for the kids. The Huffy plant decided to save money by having one common set of instructions for all of their models. Unfortunately for me, it was up to me to figure out which model I actually had--there was no key guiding you to the correct set of instructions. Even more infuriating, there were no clear pictures that actually matched the parts that I had on hand. In a lot of cases, I just had to use my best judgment and hope that everything fit together properly. I'm just glad neither of the kids had any serious accidents on the bikes. We also have upgraded them to newer models. The kids are lucky because these bikes came pre-assembled!

The actual reason for my post is to highlight one of the positive examples. In this case, the vendor actually made it easy for me. The instructions were in perfect English. There were pictures at every step which clearly identified exactly what you were supposed to do. Even better, the little screws and washers that you needed for each step were shrink-wrapped in a separate portion of this package and clearly labeled! I was actually able to assemble the entire piece in about two hours.

I'm sure that the cost of gathering the parts and getting them lined up on the card was not trivial. At the same time, I'm sure that this detailed organization makes it much more likely for consumers to be able to assemble their projects without any problems. Each service call or return is very costly. I'm sure they have probably done an analysis and figured out that this is much more cost-effective. Not only that, it has certainly made me a very satisfied customer at the very start!

Rooting for the underdog

Last night, the opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament began. Commonly known as "March Madness", the spectacle now seems to be a time-honored tradition. People who haven't watched a single contest all year are struggling to get the picks in their brackets correct for their local pools.

Basketball is played with only five players on a team at a time. One superstar can take a lackluster college team quite far in the tournament. The current reigning MVP in the NBA, Steph Curry, led Davidson--at the time a virtual unknown quantity--to the Elite Eight. Many of the teams are actually quite evenly matched. This leads to a number of surprises with the scrappy underdogs upsetting the giant programs with their storied history. It happens every year and it never seems to lose its thrill.

In the NY Times, Jon Werthheim and Sam Sommers write about the eternal appeal of the underdog story. Here is a key excerpt:

There’s science behind this allure of the underdog. Researchers at Bowling Green State University — perhaps none too coincidentally, a typical underdog school — once documented the phenomenon. They told more than 100 survey respondents that Team A was playing Team B in a best-of-seven series in an unspecified sport. Team A was highly favored to win. Which would they root for? Eighty-one percent said the underdog. But then the subjects were told that Team B, the underdog, had, improbably, taken a 3-0 lead in the series. Now which team would they support? Half switched over to Team A, the original favorite, but now the squad on the verge of elimination.

I found this paragraph on how it literally changes your perception of the game to be fascinating:

Another study revealed that underdog status doesn’t merely inspire rooting, it also changes our perception of what we see on the court. When told that a team was the underdog, research participants saw a play like a defender getting close to an opponent and knocking the ball away as reflecting hustle and grit. When watching the very same play, but under the impression that it came from the favored team instead, people saw the tough defense as more of a reflection of natural ability, not effort.

Most of us like to hear about the underdog winning because we see ourselves in the feisty non-favorite. We like to think that, given the same opportunity, we might overcome the obstacles to our own success. At the same time, the article goes on to point out that even though we prefer the story line of the underdog, we wager quite differently.

Yet with our fondness for the underdog, we usually say one thing and do the other. We love underdog independent bookstores but still spend more money at Amazon. We love the neighborhood Italian joint but still take the kids to Olive Garden. We say all the right things about supporting local businesses, but convenience and discount prices often win out.

....

It’s an intoxicating, yet often fleeting and shallow fling, our romance with the underdog. We’re enthralled by David, but wager more on Goliath. We’ll spend this Thursday and Friday rooting for basketball Cinderella stories, but still festoon our walls with the logos of favorites.

Personally, I root for my alma mater. Unfortunately, the Hoyas didn't make the tourney this year. Now, I'll just root for entertaining games.

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-eternal-appeal-of-the-underdog.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 

Will you stay true to your....hospital?

Via the Advisory Board, there is a new attempt to convince patients to stick with their chosen medical facility. JAMA recently published an article arguing that hospitals should institute loyalty programs for their patients. 

Here is their reasoning:

The benefits of loyalty programs, the authors argue, are two-fold: Customers benefit through the perks and rewards, and businesses benefit by strengthening relationships with patients.

The authors note that customers who feel positively toward their providers are more likely to keep coming back—and it's less expensive to retain a current patient than to market to new ones. Loyal customers also are more likely to overlook problems such as difficulty scheduling appointments, and they're more likely to tell friends about the business, the authors write.

Loyalty programs also can cut down on costs. Health care providers can partner with gyms, pharmacies, or other health organizations to provide loyalty rewards—incentivizing patients to focus on their health, which can lower the cost of care.

There is the obvious counter:

Some providers doubt the value of loyalty programs, believing that patients care more about clinical excellence than anything else. In this view, patients will wait in line, struggle to get an appointment, and endure subpar service if it means they can get great care.

But the authors argue that this "pervasive myth" overstates a "patient's ability to appreciate technical excellence," and that a combination of excellent care and quality customer service is a new way to attract and retain patients in a highly competitive market (Bird,FierceHealthcare, 3/1; McMahon Jr. et al., STAT News, 3/2; McJahon Jr. et al, Journal of the American Medical Association, 3/1).

What do you think? Would you be willing to institute a program if you were a hospital administrator? Do you think the existence of a program might influence your decision on which care provider to use?

In my own opinion, I think that the strategy might work if it's focused on the right group. In some cases, it may not be the patients themselves. It might actually be the family member(s) who have to shuttle their aging relatives to visits for chronic conditions. Since it's difficult to really judge the quality of the medical care, these additional perks may be enough to gain an extra percentage of patients.

Here is the link to the full article:  Is a Starbucks-style loyalty program right for hospitals? | The Advisory Board Daily Briefing 

Putting all the world's water in a single cube

On the site Wait But Why, there is an interesting thought experiment. The author tries to imagine what it might look like if you took every drop of water on the planet and placed it into a giant cube.

He starts with a graphic from Wikipedia which helps show just how little fresh water there really is on the planet:

What's even more amazing is that all of the world's oceans, lakes, and rivers are really only a very thin film covering the surface of the earth. The cube containing all of the water (fresh or salt) is less than 700 miles on each side. From there, the cubes get progressively smaller. Here is a visualization of a comparison between all water, only fresh water, drinkable fresh water, and all the world's rivers combined on the same photo.

Here is a link to the full article:  http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/putting-all-worlds-water-into-big-cube.html 

Splish, splash

Samsung released details on their latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S7. I found this particular .gif to be most impressive. The reviews of the phone are quite positive. Outside of some substandard software and carrier bloatware, there aren't too many major faults. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The signature improvement, the one that will headline many reviews, is true: The S7 line is all but waterproof. In tech terms, the S7 phones have an IP68 rating: Impervious to dust and protected from prolonged immersion of up to 3 meters.

In 30 years of reviewing electronics, I've never before dunked a product. This past week, I filled a sink (it's still winter in New York and a pool wasn't handy) and dropped in a phone. On purpose. And left it there. It sank -- but it was fine. None of the obvious penetration points -- the micro-USB power port, mic, speaker, power and volume buttons, SIM/memory drawer -- leaked water. Over the past year (admittedly a bad year) this single feature would have saved my family $1,000.

The screens of the S7 and S7 Edge will knock your eyes out. Both displays are Super AMOLED, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4, 2560 x 1440 pixels with a 640dpi resolution. They're astonishingly sharp, and the processing infrastructure behind them easily keeps up with the displays. The added real estate of the dot pitch and pixel count gives the interface room to breathe that you may not have known you were missing.

The S7’s camera is actually lower resolution than the S6’s5, but it has physically larger pixels and a brighter lens, so the loss in resolution is made up for by better low-light performance. It still has optical image stabilization and can record 4K video. The S7’s camera produces bright, sharp, detailed images again and again, and I didn’t hesitate to rely on the S7’s camera when I needed to.

Part of this is the new dual-pixel autofocus technology, which Samsung says is the same kind of technology found in some DSLR cameras. Each pixel on the S7’s sensor acts as an autofocus point, so the camera is able to quickly focus on a subject and adjust as it moves. The effect is most noticeable when shooting video and the camera has to rack focus between two points.

The S7 and S7 Edge aren’t perfect — the software still lags behind the hardware — but they get the basics right: great screens, great cameras, great performance, and reliable battery life. They also have eye-catching designs and premium materials — in the Android world, the level of polish is unmatched.

Here are some links to a few reviews:

Review: Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge -- the new phones to beat | Computerworld 

Samsung Galaxy S7 edge Review - SlashGear 

Samsung Galaxy S7 review: on the edge of perfection | The Verge 

No one ever pays list price

When I was much younger, I remember watching "The Price is Right" with my grandmother. Many of the games involved trying to guess the "actual retail price" for various consumer items. Sometimes, it would be expensive items like cars. Often, it involved various random packaged goods from the grocery store like floor cleaner or dishwasher detergent. 

Today, we've entered a new age. It seems everyone is looking for a deal. Major retailers like Macy's actually tried a strategy to wean their customers off of discount coupons only to hit fierce resistance from their most loyal customers. It seems that nobody likes to pay the same price as everyone else (even if it is a lower price than the "sale"!).

This article from the NY Times notices the trend. With the transparency of web shopping, they found the same sale price at numerous web sites with various percentages off the "list price". Which, of course, makes you wonder what the real "list price" was all along. It seems that no one pays list price. If that is the case, why would you even need it?

Here is one recent example of how retailers use list prices to motivate online buyers: Le Creuset’s iron-handle skillet, 11 ¾ inches wide and cherry in color.

Amazon said late last week that it would knock $60 off the $260 list price to sell the skillet for $200. Sounds like a bargain, the sort of deal that has helped propel Amazon to over $100 billion in annual revenue.

Check around, though. The suggested price for the skillet at Williams-Sonoma.com is $285, but customers can buy it for $200. At AllModern.com, the list price is $250 but its sale price is $200. At CutleryandMore.com, the list price is $285 and the sale price is $200.

An additional 15 or so online retailers — some hosted by Amazon, others on Google Shopping — charge $200. On Le Creuset’s own site, it sells the pan for $200.

This tactic is coming under increasing scrutiny:

“Offline retailers need blowout sales to draw traffic due to the costs of visiting a store — driving, then parking, walking and searching,” said Rafi Mohammed, a consultant and author of “The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow.” “Online retailers don’t use blowout sales since it’s so easy to shop there. But to provide confidence to consumers that they are consistently getting good deals, it’s even more important for them to provide price comparisons.”

After the Overstock suit, online pricing policies are coming under greater scrutiny.

Two customers sued Amazon in late 2014, saying its list prices violated false advertising laws by bearing no relation to the prevailing market prices. The case was dismissed after Amazon pointed out that its customers gave up their right to sue in favor of binding arbitration.

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/technology/its-discounted-but-is-it-a-deal-how-list-prices-lost-their-meaning.html?ref… 

Boeing cleans up

Recent studies have proven that the airline bathroom is one of the most germ-filled places on an airplane.  In an effort to innovate and combat one of the main problems faced by fliers, Boeing has introduced something unusual and possibly quite exciting:  the airplane bathroom that cleans itself!

The solution uses a type of ultraviolet light to kill pathogens in the bathroom. Here are more details from a Boeing press release:

The lavatory uses far UV light, which is different from the ultraviolet A or ultraviolet B light used in tanning beds or grow lights, so it’s not harmful to humans. It is harmful to bacteria and pathogens and kills those organisms that are left on the surfaces of the lavatory.

“The UV light destroys all known microbes by literally making them explode,” said Jamie Childress, Associate Technical Fellow and a BR&T engineer. “It matches the resonant frequency of the molecular bonds on the outside of the microbes.”

“We believe that using the far UV is the key to making those surfaces cleaner,” King said. “We position the lights throughout the lavatory so that it floods the touch surfaces like the toilet seat, sink, countertops, etc. with the UV light. This sanitizing even eliminates odors from bacteria so that passengers can have a more pleasant experience.”

The UV lights could clean the lavatory during flight when the door is closed and the lavatory is unoccupied to minimize human exposure to the light as an extra precaution. The cleaning system even lifts and closes the toilet seat by itself so that all surfaces are exposed. The cleaning cycle takes less than three seconds.

The team’s design also incorporates hands-free faucets, a soap dispenser, trash flap, the toilet lid and seat, as well as a hand dryer to reduce the waste of paper towels. The team also is studying a hands-free door latch and a vacuum-vent system for the floor, all to keep the lavatory as hygienic as possible between scheduled cleanings.

According to Bloomberg News, this could also have significant cost savings for the airlines:

Boeing’s concept is a finalist for a Crystal Cabin Award that will be announced at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, on April 5.

The potential benefits aren’t just in the bathroom. The self-cleaning concept could also help airlines save money on costly repairs, Mann said.

Toilets “are notoriously difficult to keep maintained to high standards, which shows up as odors that cannot be controlled and eventually, corrosion to structures adjoining the lav module,” such as floor beams and fuselage stringers, Mann said. “It really would be a maintenance cost savings, too.”

Personally, the concept of a touchless, sanitary airline bathroom sounds like a winner to me!

Here is the link to the Boeing press release:     Boeing: The Airplane Bathroom That Cleans Itself 

Here is the link to the Bloomberg article:     Boeing's New Self-Cleaning Toilet Is a Germophobe's Delight - Bloomberg Business 

Fun tour of American accents

Amazing to watch:

Which incentive is more powerful?

What is the best way to motivate people? It's a simple question with a surprisingly difficult answer.

A professor performed an experiment on two different classes to see if he could come up with evidence.

Dalakas, a professor of marketing at California State University San Marcos, offered optional pop quizzes in both sections of his consumer-behavior class. If students did well on a quiz, they earned a point; if they did poorly, though, they lost a point. If they gained five points over the course of the semester, they could earn the right to opt out of the final exam.

The trick, however, was this, Dalakas writes for the Conversation:

In the first class, the students were told that the final exam was required but they could earn the right to not take it with five points from the quizzes. In the second class however, they were told that the final exam was optional. But, they could lose that right if they did not get five points from the quizzes.

So the difference was in the framing: The right to opt out of the final was either something to gain or something to lose.

Both classes had about the same number of students, learned the same material, earned about the same grades, and, of course, learned from the same teacher. But the outcomes were remarkably different. In the first class — where students were given the opportunity to work toward the right to opt out of the test — 43 percent of the students scored the five necessary points. But the second class — again, where the right to opt out of the final exam was presented as theirs to lose — had a much stronger showing at the end of the term, with 82 percent of students eligible to claim their right to skip the final exam.

Dalakas credits "loss aversion" as a more powerful tool than traditional bonus incentives.

Dalakas explains his findings with the behavioral-economics phenomenon called loss aversion, or the idea that our annoyance over losing something is stronger than our joy over gaining something. Dalakas uses the example of a $20 bill: You’d probably be peeved if you discovered you’d somehow lost 20 bucks. If you’d found a $20 bill lying around, on the other hand, you’d be happy — but the strength of that emotion would be milder than if you’d lost it.

What would you have done?

Here is the link to the full article:  http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/this-professor-turned-his-classes-into-an-experiment-in-motivation.html 

Lime green can be beautiful

While I must admit that this is not a color I would personally choose, the new Prius offers an interesting alternative. In an attempt to improve fuel economy without changing any of the mechanical components, Toyota realized that they needed to consider all of the electrical needs for the vehicle. During summer months, air conditioning can cut fuel economy by up to 25%! 

Toyota will be introducing special solar reflective paints in the latest model of the Prius. The special paint uses titanium dioxide particles which do not contain carbon black. This reflection of the sun's rays can keep your car up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Farenheit) cooler!

While this may sound like a minor difference, if multiplied across the fleet it could make a significant dent in global emissions:

Independent research indicates this is more than a marketing stunt. A 2011 study in the journal Applied Energyfound that a silver car with a solar reflective coating could reduce a car’s “thermal load” by up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to an otherwise identical black car. The silver car required 13 percent less air conditioning to cool the cabin to a baseline 77 degrees. Another study estimated that putting this kind of paint on every passenger car in Japan could cut CO2 emissions by 210,000 tons a year (the country produces about 1.4 billion tons of emissions annually).

Pair the paint with related tech like infrared-reflecting windows, and the effects are amplified. When the DOE tested a Cadillac STS with infrared-reflective glass (offered by automakers including Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Volvo) and solar reflective paint, it found the car’s cooling demands dropped by 30 percent (from 5.7 to 4.0 kW).

Here is the link to the full article:  Toyota’s Lime Green Paint May Be Ugly, But It Can Cut Gas Bills | WIRED 

Building a perfect team

Throughout our career, we'll be asked to work on teams. They will come in various shapes and sizes. We'll probably be asked to work with people of different skills with different personalities. 

Google is interested in trying to build the perfect team. They opened "Project Aristotle" to study how they might achieve major improvements in their teams. This article in the NY Times discusses what they found.

Early on in the article, you are asked to decide which team you would rather join:

Team A is composed of people who are all exceptionally smart and successful. When you watch a video of this group working, you see professionals who wait until a topic arises in which they are expert, and then they speak at length, explaining what the group ought to do. When someone makes a side comment, the speaker stops, reminds everyone of the agenda and pushes the meeting back on track. This team is efficient. There is no idle chitchat or long debates. The meeting ends as scheduled and disbands so everyone can get back to their desks.

Team B is different. It’s evenly divided between successful executives and middle managers with few professional accomplishments. Teammates jump in and out of discussions. People interject and complete one another’s thoughts. When a team member abruptly changes the topic, the rest of the group follows him off the agenda. At the end of the meeting, the meeting doesn’t actually end: Everyone sits around to gossip and talk about their lives.

Which group would you rather join?

Researchers studied this issue by analyzing hundreds of teams to see if they could figure out what would work and what would not. Because of the wide differences between the makeup of the teams, they couldn't draw direct parallels. Instead, they found common themes. If a team succeeded in some tasks, they generally built on that success and succeeded at most of them. Conversely, if they ran into problems, they generally struggled at everything.

As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’

Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues.

Based on these findings, it seems as if Team B would go on to have more success. There were other findings, too:

What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor.

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The paradox, of course, is that Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.

The fact that these insights aren’t wholly original doesn’t mean Google’s contributions aren’t valuable. In fact, in some ways, the ‘‘employee performance optimization’’ movement has given us a method for talking about our insecurities, fears and aspirations in more constructive ways. It also has given us the tools to quickly teach lessons that once took managers decades to absorb. Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways.

‘‘Just having data that proves to people that these things are worth paying attention to sometimes is the most important step in getting them to actually pay attention,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘Don’t underestimate the power of giving people a common platform and operating language.’’

Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized. Rozovsky herself was reminded of this midway through her work with the Project Aristotle team. ‘‘We were in a meeting where I made a mistake,’’ Rozovsky told me. She sent out a note afterward explaining how she was going to remedy the problem. ‘‘I got an email back from a team member that said, ‘Ouch,’ ’’ she recalled. ‘‘It was like a punch to the gut. I was already upset about making this mistake, and this note totally played on my insecurities.’’

After all of the study, Google didn't seem to learn anything more than "common sense" might have told them. That said, it was likely still worth the effort to underscore just how important some of the "soft skills" could be--even to the hard sciences and technology!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html