After decades of rumors and searches, the existence of a
two-foot-long amphibian called “the Reticulated Siren” has finally been
confirmed.
Sometimes you go into a Florida swamp to study turtles and end up
encountering a two-foot-long salamander previously undescribed by
science.
That’s what happened to biologist David Steen
back in 2009 when he pulled up one of his turtle traps from the swampy
waters around Elgin Air Force Base. The trap didn’t contain turtles, but
he did find a giant, eel-like salamander resting comfortably inside.
“It was just kind of sitting on the bottom of the trap, waiting patiently,” Steen says.
Steen was a lot more excited than the animal in front of him. He knew
he was looking at an amphibian few people had ever seen before.
Steen says he first started hearing rumors of a massive undiscovered
salamander species during his graduate-student days at Alabama’s Auburn
University in early 2007. “My advisor, Craig Guyer, was showing me
around their Museum of Natural History and he kind of tapped his
knuckles on this big specimen jar,” Steen recounts.
The contents were
labeled as another large salamander species, the greater siren (Siren lacertina),
but Guyer suggested that it didn’t look quite right. “He said it’s
probably a new species just waiting for someone to describe it.”
Read more: The Revelator - Scientific American
A paper by Steen, Graham and other researchers published recently in the journal PLOS ONE describes the new species and names it the Reticulated Siren (S. reticulata).
thechrissutton: Last performance of Hamlet at The Gate Theatre tonight featuring the brilliant Ruth Negga. Throwback to our photo session for the poster art in August.
The biggest jump is at 11:00am EST (4:00pm UTC) when midnight reaches the UTC+8 time zone. That time zone, which includes China, is home to a quarter of the world’s population. India and Sri Lanka (UTC+5:30) put us over the 50% mark soon after.
“When he announced the plan to his employees, he asked them to brainstorm how to keep their own productivity as high as it had been before as their hours changed to get Wednesdays or Fridays off. With the incentive of time off, they got creative. “Often there are lots of small inefficiencies which never get addressed in a company because they are just really too small for someone to focus their time on,” he says. “Now, because there was a prize–namely to have a day off–all of those little things got addressed or got identified.”
Employees spent less time in meetings. They spent less time on social media. They started experimenting with signals on their desks–like a flag in a small pot next to their computer–to indicate to coworkers when they shouldn’t be interrupted. (Studies have found that it can take more than 20 minutes to get focused after an interruption.) Because there were fewer people in the office, noise and distractions went down. And despite the fact that the staff was spending 20% less time in the office, productivity didn’t fall.”
“Job satisfaction, though fairly high before the experiment, ticked upward, as did employees’ sense of satisfaction with their lives in general. Perception of workload went down. Job stress declined from 45% to 38%. Employees’ sense of engagement with their work went up, and their commitment to their employer rose from 68% to 88%. They found their work more stimulating, had more confidence in the leadership team, and felt more empowered in their roles.
The company is now moving forward to implement the change permanently, though it has to sort through some bureaucratic issues–like the fact that under New Zealand law, workers accrue vacation time based on time spent in the office. “You’ve got to make the legislation more flexible because it doesn’t really contemplate different methods of working,” says Barnes, who is now in conversation with New Zealand legislators.
But he believes it’s something that companies widely should adopt. Stress-related mental health issues are common, and the experiment showed that stress went down. When a new mother negotiates a shorter work week, in most jobs now, “she gets paid 20% less,” he says. “Why? This is about productivity. Negotiate on productivity–hours are irrelevant.”
I’ve been a fan of 4-day weeks since literally before I could spell my full name.
See, when I was little, my town had a 4-day school week.
All the necessary stuff got taught, teachers were creative and less stressed, kids were less stressed, parents were less stressed, there were free programmes on Fridays so that parents didn’t have to worry about child-care.
Then a bunch of republicans, who no longer actually had kids in school, decided that it was too expensive and managed to get enough votes to make us have a regular old 5-day week.
I watched as a school - which at one time had people moving from out of state into our tiny town so their kids (especially disabled kids) could go there - slowly lost its most passionate, innovative teachers, and its outstanding academic performance. And our town went from a community to a place that one happened to live.
![historyarchaeologyartefacts:
“Incense Burner in Form of a Praying Mantis, Japan 18-19th century [1800x1200]
”](https://66.media.tumblr.com/0670018ca5421a47c1c9e9dd4b37709d/tumblr_pk23myXdXp1vx1np0o1_1280.jpg)
