Climate change may make Bordeaux red wines stronger and tastier

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Climate change may make Bordeaux red wines stronger and tastier     PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Centre, University of Oxford It’s harvest time again for most of Europe’s wine growing regions and grapes are being picked from the UK in the north to Sicily in the south. The grapes are then sorted and pressed to make the best juices possible. These juices will then be fermented in a choice of barrel, be that oak, concrete, clay or stainless steel, to make wine ready for blending and bottling in the spring. Continued here

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Octavia Butler's Advice on Writing     “No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do.” Continued here

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Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail     Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few. In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. A few of these endeavors have been very successful. A few have been utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale. Continued here

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What Having a "Growth Mindset" Actually Means     Scholars are deeply gratified when their ideas catch on. And they are even more gratified when their ideas make a difference — improving motivation, innovation, or productivity, for example. But popularity has a price: People sometimes distort ideas and therefore fail to reap their benefits. This has started to happen with my research on “growth” versus “fixed” mindsets among individuals and within organizations. Continued here

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The Hard Side of Change Management     Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few can agree on how to do it. Most experts are obsessed with “soft” issues, such as culture and motivation, but, say the authors, focusing on these issues alone won’t bring about change. Companies also need to consider the hard factors—like the time it takes to complete a change initiative, the number of people required to execute it, and so forth. Continued here

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How Our Brains Decide When to Trust     Trust is the enabler of global business — without it, most market transactions would be impossible. It is also a hallmark of high-performing organizations. Employees in high-trust companies are more productive, are more satisfied with their jobs, put in greater discretionary effort, are less likely to search for new jobs, and even are healthier than those working in low-trust companies. Businesses that build trust among their customers are rewarded with greater loyalty and higher sales. And negotiators who build trust with each other are more likely to find value-creating deals. Continued here

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What Makes a Leader?     When asked to define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—the qualities traditionally associated with leadership. Such skills and smarts are necessary but insufficient qualities for the leader. Often left off the list are softer, more personal qualities—but they are also essential. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, studies indicate that emotional intelligence may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate. Continued here

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Is Your Organization Investing Enough in Responsible AI? 'Probably Not,' Says Our Data     Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.For the second year in a row, MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group have assembled an international panel of AI experts to help us understand how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented across organizations worldwide. For our final question in this year's research cycle, we asked our academic and practitioner panelists to respond to this provocation: As the business community becomes more aware of AI's risks, companies are making adequate investments in RAI. Continued here

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The spooky, seven-figure business of Halloween haunted houses     Once upon a time, you could have a haunted house up and running in a day's time. Fill a bowl with grapes and call them eyeballs, add room-temperature spaghetti – those are guts – string up a few ghostly figures, crank the fog machines, lower the lights and plan a few jump scares. While it's still possible to have a spooky time on a shoestring, haunted houses are increasingly looking less like tents in primary school gyms, and more like the big-budget spectacles of theme parks, film and television productions. "Many of the top haunted houses in the country have digital show controls and animated props that are pneumatic or electric," says Chris Stafford, the CEO of haunted house production company Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which runs 18 different haunts across the US, and even employs its own director of technology. "We're not [staging] anything nowadays that's not a seven-figure number," says Stafford.  Continued here

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The rebirth of Norway's cider tradition     "Now, I want you to be opened minded," said Anne Gunn Rosvold, a food tour guide with Bergen Base Camp in Bergen, a city along the southwestern Fjord region of Norway. "Because you probably don't expect to drink this in Norway, but I am going to let you try Norwegian cider."Rosvold would be right. Cider, made from fermented apple juice, is not something I'd expect the Norwegians to be drinking – it's more common in the British Isles and coastal parts of France, particularly in Normandy. But as she explained, it has been part of the culture for a while, in fact – possibly since the time of the Vikings. Continued here

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The Amazon's colossal prehistoric fish     Jairo Natorce's surveillance post in Lake Yarina, deep in Peru's Amazon rainforest, does not have water or electricity. He works alone in this part of the park on the banks of a river full of piranhas and alligators. Here, he has one sole purpose: to protect one of the greatest biodiversity hotspots on the planet and, particularly, a colossal prehistoric fish called paiche.For the past 20 years, Natorce has been one of the park rangers in charge of protecting Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, the largest nature reserve in Peru that's more than two million hectares – half the size of Denmark or Switzerland. The reserve was created in 1972 mainly for the conservation of arapaima gigas, better known in the region as paiche or pirarucu, the second-largest river fish in the world. Continued here

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Drowning World: 12 striking photos of the climate in crisis     Muhammad Chuttal, Khaipur Nathan Shah, Sindh Province, Pakistan, October 2022, from the series Drowning World (Credit: Gideon Mendel)The people in Gideon Mendel's portraits stare back at us, not quite defiant. They appear serene, composed – and in many cases, submerged in the water that has flooded their homes. "The gaze, where people engage with the camera, is the visual focus, the emotional centre of each of these images," Mendel tells BBC Culture. "A lot of people have asked me: 'What are people saying, what is the gaze?' And I think it's strangely enigmatic. It's not necessarily accusing. I don't think it's saying: 'Look, this is your responsibility'. I think that it's saying, 'Take a look at what's happened to me'. And it's inviting us to witness their lives at this moment." Continued here

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Biden's Middle East trip has messages for both global and domestic audiences     U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to travel to an active war zone and the scene of an unfolding humanitarian crisis spoke volumes, even before his arrival.The White House has stated that Biden’s purpose is to “demonstrate his steadfast support for Israel” after Hamas’ “brutal terrorist attack” on Oct. 7, 2023. But Israel wasn’t meant to be his only stop. Continued here

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Amish culture prizes peace - but you wouldn't necessarily know it from a stop in Amish Country tourist towns     Ohio’s Amish Country, located in the northeastern part of the state, draws over 4 million visitors every year – second only to Cedar Point amusement park as the Buckeye State’s most popular tourist attraction. October, with its cooler temperatures and spectacular colors, is the region’s peak month for tourist traffic. Hundreds of thousands of tourists descend on the area in the fall to shop for Amish-made furniture, enjoy buggy rides and visit small towns that many Americans romanticize as bucolic escapes from the world. Continued here

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What do a Black scientist, nonprofit executive and filmmaker have in common? They all face racism in the 'gray areas' of workplace culture     American workplaces talk a lot about diversity these days. In fact, you’d have a hard time finding a company that says it doesn’t value the principle. But despite this – and despite the multibillion-dollar diversity industry – Black workers continue to face significant hiring discrimination, stall out at middle management levels and remain underrepresented in leadership roles.As a sociologist, I wanted to understand why this is. So I spent more than 10 years interviewing over 200 Black workers in a variety of roles – from the gig economy to the C-suite. I found that many of the problems they face come down to organizational culture. Too often, companies elevate diversity as a concept but overlook the internal processes that disadvantage Black workers. Continued here

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Nonprofits can become more resilient by spending more on fundraising and admin - new research     Most food banks, homeless shelters and other social services nonprofits constantly face hard decisions about how to use their limited funds. Should they spend as much as possible on meeting the immediate needs of people who need help? How much of their budget is appropriate to spend on new equipment, skilled managers and everything else required for an organization to thrive and endure?To help nonprofits tackle this quandary, we teamed up with two other business professors, Arian Aflaki and Goker Aydin, to develop a mathematical model to guide nonprofits on how to divvy up their spending to optimize both current performance and future resilience through their spending priorities. Continued here

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COVID-19 vaccine mandates have come and mostly gone in the US - an ethicist explains why their messy rollout matters for trust in public health     Ending pandemics is a social decision, not scientific. Governments and organizations rely on social, cultural and political considerations to decide when to officially declare the end of a pandemic. Ideally, leaders try to minimize the social, economic and public health burden of removing emergency restrictions while maximizing potential benefits.Vaccine policy is a particularly complicated part of pandemic decision-making, involving a variety of other complex and often contradicting interests and considerations. Although COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives in the U.S., vaccine policymaking throughout the pandemic was often reactive and politicized. Continued here

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Hamas was unpopular in Gaza before it attacked Israel - surveys showed Gazans cared more about fighting poverty than armed resistance     Amid the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war, observers in the region and internationally continue to make assumptions about Gazan public support for Hamas. Mistaken assumptions such as those by U.S. presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, claiming that all Gazans are “antisemitic,” or those that blame Gazans for “electing Hamas” may shape debates not only on how the war is perceived, but also over relief plans for Gazans in the months ahead. Continued here

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Biden in Israel: How U.S. foreign policy has played a big role in the Israel-Hamas war     Shaun Narine has contributed to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace.U.S. President Joe Biden is in Israel to lend support to the country in the midst of an already bloody war between the Israelis and Hamas, including the bombing of a Gaza City hospital that has left hundreds dead. Continued here