Plus: Oil Droplets Navigating Labyrinths, India Developing Space “Kill Vehicles” and an Avalanche Occurring on Mars.

Psychologists Recommend Rating Your Boss
British research published this month reveals that telling the boss what you think of him or her is good for your health and can help to reduce stress and improve communication in the workplace. The study, presented at the British Psychological Society’s Occupational Psychology Conference this week, found that the relationship between staff and line managers was the most commonly reported cause of stress in the workplace.

“In pursuit of happy, healthy, stress-free employees, psychologists urge companies to allow employees to rate their managers’ ability to manage,” a press release from the annual conference summarizes.

Researchers split a group of 150 bosses into two groups, one of which received feedback on their management skills from some 500 staff, while the other did not.

The study, by Emma Donaldson-Feilder from workplace health consultancy Affinity Health At Work, determined that when bosses received feedback from their staff, they were more likely to change their management style and be seen as more effective. (Let’s see if it works for Conan O’Brien and NBC.)

Feilder said that employees also benefit, as telling a boss what they think of them allows employees to let off steam. It is not yet known what impact this kind of transparency might have on the well-being of line managers. Nor its impact on actually staying employed.

Oil Droplets Navigate Chemical Maze
Researchers at Northwestern University have demonstrated that a simple droplet of oil can navigate a complex labyrinth.

Physical chemist Bartosz Grzybowski made a number of silicon mazes about 6.5 square centimeters in size. To create the conditions for movement, the researchers filled the mazes with an alkaline solution of potassium hydroxide. Placed at the entrance of the labyrinths, the maze runners were “millimeter-wide droplets of either mineral oil or the organic solvent dichloromethane, both loaded with a weak acid and red dye,” according to ScienceNOW Daily News. A chunk of agarose gel that had been soaked in hydrochloric acid was at the end. The acid from the gel soaked into the fluid near the goal of the maze, creating a more acidic environment.

“Over the course of a minute or so, each droplet found its way to the end of the maze,” ScienceNOW says.

Video via New Scientist

The findings, published online this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, suggest that the basic principles involved may be applicable to, and more effective in, the delivery of antineoplastic chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells.

“Cancer is more acidic than the rest of the body, so by utilizing this motion from a basic environment towards acid, there might be a way to deliver drugs in a more targeted way,” science and sci-fi blog io9 explains. Computers and mathematics could also benefit.

India Seeks to Join Space Arms Race
From orbiting lasers that strike from the heavens to recent anti-satellite tests, the potential to wage war from space raises startling possibilities. Earlier this month, India announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric ‘kill vehicle’ to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

According to Space.com (via Popular Science), the “kill vehicle” will be guided by a yet-to-be-developed laser, which will lock onto the offending satellite and keep the anti-satellite spacecraft on a solid interception course. Neither the laser nor the kill vehicle exists yet.

The idea of putting weapons in space is not new. Beginning in the 1960s, the former Soviet Union and the United States both tested anti-satellite weapons. Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a. “Star Wars”) proposed to arm a series of ground- and space-based stations with interceptor missiles (for defensive purposes only). In 2007, China slammed a ground-based ballistic missile into one of its aging satellites, and the U.S. similarly destroyed a malfunctioning satellite in 2008.

To date, there have been no human casualties resulting from conflict in space, nor has any ground target been neutralized from orbit successfully. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by more than 90 countries (including the U.S.), outlaws the use of weapons in orbit.

An Avalanche on Mars
“There is a vast region of sand dunes at high northern latitudes on Mars,” the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) explains. “In the winter, a layer of carbon dioxide ice covers the dunes, and in the spring as the sun warms the ice it evaporates. This is a very active process, and sand dislodged from the crests of the dunes cascades down, forming dark streaks.”

Click image for larger view.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Or, as Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog puts it: “This is an avalanche. On another planet. Caught as it happened. Awe. Some.”

Cheers.