S1
The lighter side
Top 3
One thing from the week that made us smile, with a small point attached.
Lighter
Japanese researchers filmed small Southeast Asian snakes that flee by rolling instead of slithering. They reached 1.7 to 3.7 meters a second, about four times their best slithering speed, and held the head pointed forward at a steady height.
4x
faster rolling than its best slithering speed
Why this mattersThe snake did not get stronger, it switched methods for the moment that mattered. Your team has a step like that. Pick the one task that always runs late, and ask whether a different method beats pushing the same one harder.
Lighter
A small open-source robot duck that stomps, naps and somersaults on voice command passed 20,000 preorders the day after a conference video went around. It is made by Pollen Robotics, now part of Nvidia, and ships before Christmas.
20,000
preorders a day after the video went around
Why this mattersNothing technical sold those ducks. People saw one move and wanted it. Your careers page and job posts work the same way, so replace one paragraph of duties with a 30 second clip of the actual team doing the actual work.
Lighter
Chinese researchers named a new 150-million-year-old bird from a fossil found in Fujian province, in Nature. It had serrated teeth and a sickle claw like a meat-eating dinosaur, and legs built for walking, making it the earliest bird known to lose flight.
150M yrs
old, the earliest bird known to lose flight
Why this mattersIt kept the wings and stopped using them, because walking paid better where it lived. Capability you no longer use still costs you. List the software and reports your team pays for but has not opened in a quarter, and cut two.
S2
Science & technology
Top 3
Research and engineering from the week, with what each one suggests about running a business.
Science
Mark Senn's team at the University of Warwick used powerful X-rays to map the inside of a copper-based superconductor that labs have studied for about 40 years. It is a patchwork of regions with slightly different atomic arrangements, and the boundaries between them are hundreds of times wider than expected, published in Physical Review Letters.
40 yrs
of assuming the material was the same throughout
Why this mattersEveryone measured the average and the average hid the structure. Your people numbers do this. Before you act on a company-wide engagement or turnover figure, break it out by team and manager, because the problem usually sits in two of them.
Science
A team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland measured iron, titanium and chromium in half a gram of material a NASA spacecraft brought back from the asteroid Bennu. The mix matches neither the inner nor the outer solar system, so Bennu formed about 4.5 billion years ago at the boundary where the two mixed, published in Science Advances.
0.5 g
of asteroid dust that settled the question
Why this mattersA half gram answered a question nobody could settle by looking from a distance. Sampling beats surveying everyone. Instead of another all-staff survey, sit with six people across three teams for 30 minutes each and you will have your answer.
Science
Commonwealth Fusion Systems won an 85 million dollar US government award on October 23 to develop power electronics and radiation-hardened chips for fusion plants, with the government taking a stake in return. Its first reactor is not due to switch on until next year, so the parts are being built before the plant exists.
$85M
for parts a plant that does not exist yet needs
Why this mattersThe money came with the government taking a stake, which is the real price of that funding. Check what your own cheap options cost you. Before taking a discount on a multi-year software contract, write down what you give up if the team outgrows the tool.