Generational stereotypes in the workplace can hinder effective communication, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. This chapter explores how multigenerational employee resource groups (ERGs) contribute to reducing generational biases in the workplace, facilitate intergenerational learning, and foster proactive followership. We gathered data from six global companies with active ERGs with a focus on supporting multigenerational workforces and generational diversity as part of their mission within their organizations. Our research found that multigenerational ERGs function as inclusive spaces where individuals frequently engage in mentoring, knowledge-sharing, and leading initiatives that contribute to fostering a more inclusive workplace for a generationally diverse workforce. Our findings reveal both benefits and challenges associated with operating multigenerational ERGs at different stages of their maturity and provide practical insights into how supporting them can contribute to organizational inclusion and business outcomes. These results have several implications for ERG leaders and members, organizational leaders, human resource and learning and development professionals, inclusion practitioners, and academicians who aim to engage employee-led groups such as ERGs to better understand how to support their development and impact.
Plants produce a variety of structural and chemical defences to deter herbivores, which can covary across every scale of biological organization. Along these lines, it has been suggested that young leaves differ from old leaves in their defence strategies, but studies have largely focused on woody plants and/or chemical traits. Thus, we lack an understanding of how structural and chemical defences ontogenetically covary across a large portion of plant diversity. We investigate the range of structural and chemical defences of thistles (tribe Cardueae), which comprise herbaceous species with a wide spectrum of defensive traits. We collected structural and chemical trait data across species and leaf ages from field collections, herbarium specimens and the literature. Species' young leaves tend to produce similar suites of traits, with greater interspecific variation in older leaves. Young leaves are dominated by chemical defences, while older leaves produce a broader range of both chemical and physical defence traits. Leaf spininess is associated with a distinct chemical profile that differs from that of non-spiny species. Our study demonstrates how defence strategies can vary across the leaves of herbaceous species and their ages. Expanding such efforts will be critical to further our macroevolutionary understanding of variation in plant defences.Read the free for this article on the Journal blog.
In this paper, we study thermodynamics and its applications of a family of static charged dilaton black holes in 2+1 dimensions found by Chan and Mann [Phys. Rev. D50, 6385 (1994) [Erratum-ibid. 52, 2600 (1995)]] and Xu [Eur. Phys. J. C79, 642 (2019)]. There is a dimensionless parameter N in the black hole solutions presented: It is related to the coupling constant for the dilaton with the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field. Black hole horizons exist only for 2/3 <= N<2. N=1 black hole is a solution to low-energy string theory. Thermodynamics is studied in the canonical ensemble where charge is constant as well as in grand canonical ensemble where the potential is constant. The cosmological constant is considered as a thermodynamical variable where the pressure P=-Lambda 8 pi. We computed the first law and the Smarr relations for the black hole and introduced two new thermodynamical parameters in order to satisfy the first law. We computed temperature, thermodynamic volume, specific heat capacities, Gibbs free energy and studied local and global stability of the black hole. Thermodynamic volume differs from the geometric volume. In the canonical ensemble, we noticed that thermodynamic behavior falls into two broad categories: For 23 <= N<1, small black holes are locally stable and large black holes are not. For 1 <= N<2, the black hole is locally and globally stable for all values of the horizon radius. In order to demonstrate the two broad categories, we have presented N=1,23 and N=67 black holes in detail. There were no phase transitions for the above values of N. In the grand canonical ensemble, we noticed that there is a Hawking-Page phase transition for the black hole with N=6/5. We have also studied the Joule-Thomson expansion and the Reverse Isoperimetric Inequality of these black holes. We made the observation that the charged dilaton black hole does not violate the Reverse Isoperimetric Inequality for certain values of the parameters of the theory. Finally, we have suggested future work.
Using a novel climate policy uncertainty (CPU) measure based on emissions legislation, climate protests, and presidential statements, we show that in response to climate policy risk, firms tend to strategically reduce their future innovation, measured by patent counts, citations, and innovation value. Green innovation, however, is less vulnerable than non-green innovation. We argue that CPU constrains innovation through a precautionary motive: firms under high uncertainty face higher external financing costs and shift from prospector (innovation-oriented) to defender (cost-minimizing) strategies. Results are robust to instrumental variable estimation, firm fixed effects, and a difference-in-differences design exploiting the Paris Agreement as an exogenous shock. These findings underscore the strategic and policy implications of uncertainty in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Overall, our results provide insights into policy implications.
We review results from ongoing monitoring campaigns (in the optical, UV, X-rays and radio) on some of the most highly variable AGN known, and the identification of new AGN in extreme flux or spectral states, including some of the highest-amplitude outbursts observed to date, deep low-states, unexpected long-term trends, and systems which exhibit extreme Seyfert-type transitions ("changing-look AGN"). Long-term lightcurves, densely covered for multiple years, and follow-up spectroscopy in different spectral bands are used to shed light on the underlying variability mechanisms including accretion disk and broad-line region physics. Remarkable differences are seen, for instance, in the optical spectral response to extreme outbursts, implying very different intrinsic variability mechanisms. If time allows, I will also review most recent results from multi-year projects to test binary supermassive black hole models of the highly variable blazar OJ 287.
