F.Y.I. —

Step Aside Superman, Steel No Competition for This New Material

When it comes to materials, there is no question as to who wins the strongman competition. Spider silk is known as being the strongest fabric, and steel, ceramics and glass fibers are the best building materials.

But now, researchers are reporting in ACS Nano that specially arranged nano-sized cellulose fibers are the strongest material of them all, in a move that might cause some to re-name Superman the “man of cellulose.”

Although technology has rapidly advanced, researchers are still playing catch-up with nature. Recently, scientists have been trying to mimic the architecture of natural materials on the nanoscale level with the hopes that it would translate to larger-scale strength.

For example, a strong, stiff cell wall layer in wood is made up of cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs), and the organization of this material has served as inspiration for the creation of strong, macroscale substances. But poor adhesion and un-aligned components have prevented researchers from realizing this goal. So, Daniel Siderberg and colleagues sought to overcome these limitations.

The team used flow-assisted assembly to organize CNFs into a near-perfect alignment within macroscale fibers. Even the weakest fiber they made with the method was stronger than other CNF fibers previously reported. Most importantly, the macroscale fibers were stronger than metal, alloys and glass fibers. And they are both stronger and eight times stiffer than dragline spider silk, which is the gold standard for lightweight biopolymers, at the same specific strength.

The researchers say that the material could be useful in many load-bearing applications, such as light-weight bio-based composites for cars and bikes, as well as high-performance medical implants.

 

Women Use Gossip as a Weapon in Rivalries

Adult women often use the same gossiping techniques as adolescent girls to tarnish another woman’s reputation and try to gain an advantage in romantic relationships, Tania Reynolds, a doctoral student in FSU’s Department of Psychology, has found.

“It’s consequential because a woman’s reputation still predicts her access to romantic partners, friendships or professional collaborations, and this research shows gossip can substantially shift social perceptions,” Reynolds said. “People tend to give more weight to negative personal information because they consider it a truer indication of a person’s character than positive details.”

Reynolds led five studies that found women were more likely to spread negative information about a woman perceived as a threat to their romantic prospects. Women strategically used gossip to target a rival who posed either a direct or indirect threat.

A direct threat included another woman trying to steal a boyfriend. Indirect threats involved women who were otherwise innocent but physically attractive or provocatively dressed.

For example, one study directed an attractive woman to wear two very different clothing styles and, in each case, share the same prurient details about her sexual activity to female participants, even though the disclosure could be devastating to her reputation.

Reynolds discovered that women who heard this damaging information were more likely to spread it when the speaker wore a low-cut shirt flaunting cleavage than when she dressed conservatively.

Her findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, also discovered highly competitive women spread negative information about their same-sex peers indiscriminately.

“This pattern suggests competitive females may be the primary perpetrators of adolescent bullying and then harmful workplace rumors,” Reynolds said.

In the age of social media, using gossip as a weapon is an easy, potentially powerful technique to harm someone’s reputation. Reynolds hopes shining a light on the behavior is the first step to curtailing it.

“If school counselors know the predictors of female bullying, and they understand it manifests in subtle ways like gossiping, then they’ll be better equipped to detect it and deal with it,” Reynolds said. “This research shows adult women demonstrate similar behaviors of adolescent bullies, and manipulating reputations can have serious consequences.”

The research confirmed consequences can be far-reaching because people often choose friends and romantic partners based on reputations. The study found gossip can make female targets seem less moral, untrustworthy or someone to be avoided.

“Reputation-harming information is not spread just by the people we interact with,” Reynolds said. “In a modern environment with social media, this information can spread much more broadly and affect others’ interpretations of us, even if we’ve never met. This issue is more important than ever.”

One unexpected finding of the study, Reynolds said, was that sometimes women shared gossip about an attractive woman, perceived as a threat, whether they liked her or not.

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