Organizations are unknowingly harming their own growth and success with these three outdated ... [+] practices.

Despite having a seat at the table, most organizations still see HR as a cost center instead of a value-added business partner. Consequently, the fight for an increase in budget remains their next big battle. An organization that fails to invest in their HR department hinders the growth and success while diminishing its overall attractiveness. Whether organizations realize it or not, HR is a reflection of the company as a whole.

In order for HR to be successful in their role, they need to be supported. Investing in HR goes beyond their personal development. It includes the resources they use to recruit, develop and retain talent. A high-performing HR team brings a wealth of benefits to an organization with a key function focused on developing leaders from within.

Unlike HR, most hiring managers lack formal interview training and management skills. As a result, they make poor hires and contribute to employee turnover. HR is largely responsible for shaping a companys culture, promoting innovation and introducing new ideas to invigorate current practices. However, if an organization doesnt see value in investing in their development to broaden their knowledge, they perpetuate outdated practices.

Here are three outdated human resource practices that are holding companies back from achieving their highest level of success.

Limiting Diversity In Recruiting

Culture fit is a buzzword that has become outdated and is used as an excuse for hiring managers to hire people most similar to them. Since the new generation of workers entered the workforce, companies have been prioritizing a culture-driven workplace. Their goals is to hire candidates who buy into their vision and fit into their current culture.

Catie Brand, senior director, international HR & talent acquisition at General Assembly, believes culture fit is outdated and promotes inequality and bias in the workplace. She adds, organizations that promote diversity, equality and inclusion focus on culture add, not culture fit.

Cultural fit not only contributes to organizational monoculture, but it can create a toxic environment for those who dont fit in. Furthermore, it prevents organizations from being innovative, disruptive and creative. Diversity is what helps organizations thrive and outperform their competitors. According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), organizations with diverse leadership teams are more innovative and have 19% higher revenue.

To measure the current teams behavior and understand blind spots, organizations can conduct a team assessment such as Predictive Index or TTI Success Insights to understand for which skills they need to hire. During the interview process, hiring managers should focus on how a candidates individuality and differences will add to the company and make it stronger. This will help them to hire the right people to close the skills gap and complement the team instead of resemble them.

Measuring Employees On Their Past

The value of reference checks remains a hotly debated topic across business. Most employers rely on them to make their final decision before hiring a candidate while some have them in place for no other reason than protocol and others believe theyre a waste of time. According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), four out of five employers use reference checks as a formality in their recruitment process. Therefore, this results in them eliminating 21% of candidates after speaking with their professional contacts.

Monster, the global employment website, broke this down to see what information hiring managers hope to gain when conducting a reference check. They found:

36% of hiring managers want to learn more about a candidates past duties and responsibilities

31% are interested in learning about their strengths and weaknesses

11% want confirmation of dates of employment and job title

8% want to know about workplace accomplishments

7% want a sense of their preferred work culture

7% are unsure of what theyre looking for

This indicates a majority of employers use reference checks to find out information they should be asking during the interview. An interview is the time when hiring managers should dig deeper into a candidates background, experience and character to evaluate if they would be a good fit for each other.

When done correctly, reference checks uncover caveats about a candidates skills and background. If a candidate seems hesitant to release information, provide references or maintain a consistent story, reaching out to references can be a valuable asset that helps reveal the pieces theyre not telling. However, due to labor laws becoming more restrictive, most companies will only verify employment and provide the dates the candidate was employed.

Many organizations have restructured their interview process to thoroughly test if a candidate can do the job, how they interact with others, whether they have a positive or negative attitude and their eagerness to learn. Today, a typical interview process consists of a pre-employment assessment, a mix of behavioral and situational based questions and a case interview. Some organizations incorporate an all day onsite interview where the candidate interacts and works with the team.

A Not-So-Progressive Discipline Plan

The once effective progressive discipline policy has become one of the most relied upon tactics to push an employee out of an organization. The reality of someone surviving a performance improvement plan (PIP) is little to none.

Patty McCord, former chief talent officer for Netflix, spoke at Ceridians Womens Network Summit last month and declared its time to retire the PIP. She says, nothing is more crueler than putting someone on a performance improvement plan with the goal of getting rid of them. McCord went on to say organizations use PIPs as a way to signal to people theyre employment is coming to an end instead of working with them to figure out the root cause of their performance.

At that point, organizations commit themselves to creating a paper trail of evidence to prove their case and prevent potential litigation against them. Not only is this demotivating, but it instills fear in the employee making them cautious about their every move. McCord says this canhave negative consequences on the overall morale of a team.

Kevin Darn, relationship advisor and author, agrees and believes PIPs are used as a warning that an employee will be let go. He said very few employees are of the belief that performance plans are instituted for their benefit. When a performance improvement plan is genuine and used to help someone grow and succeed, the impact can be overwhelmingly positive.

Instead of relying on PIPs, Ben Crudo, CEO and founder of Diff Agency, suggests managers help employees work through failures and turn setbacks into stepping stones. Managers who invest in nurturing their current talent help transform them into loyal and engaged employees. While this isnt always the case, most times when employees are struggling its due to poor leadership or a bad hire.

Employees arent receiving the feedback, development and coaching they crave. Managers should be having difficult conversations on a real-time basis and working with HR to provide resources that help employees understand what they need to improve with an action plan on the results they expect. Its vital managers and HR come together with a strategy that best utilizes their tools and resources so they can best support the people they hire and set them up for success.

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Why Culture Fit And These 2 Other HR Practices Are Hurting Your Business - Forbes

When first reading Tom Perrottas 2017 novel, Mrs. Fletcher, Kathryn Hahn was struck by what proved to be a telling choice by the author.

It was the dual stories that really intrigued me and that fact that she was written in the third person and the son was written in the first, Hahn said. There was something very interesting in that to me, the fact that this was something [Perrotta], a man, would want to dig into: the interior life of this woman.

The authors book, which formed the template for HBOs critically acclaimed limited series, switches perspective with each new chapter. The story starts in Eve Fletchers perspective, as the single mother packs up her only child, Brendan, for college, but its told through a disembodied narrator: Eve cried most of the way home. All shed wanted, from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning, was a chance to let Brendan know what was in her heart.

The next chapter starts in the first person, literally with the first word: I was a little dazed when we headed out to dinner, Brendan says, and everything that follows is from inside his head: Id been dreaming about the ability to do what I wanted; my mom; four of us. But for the show, both Perrotta and Hahn knew they needed to balance out those two viewpoints.

If we could figure out getting from Eves third person in the novel if we could squirrel it into the first person together that was going to be a really interesting collaboration and journey, Hahn said.

That was a real concerted effort and very much a focus of Kathryn and the directors: It is a show about this womans intimate life and there a lot of sex scenes, often solo, and it was just really important to say, This is not a show thats going to cater to a male gaze. Theyre sexual scenes, but theyre not sexy or titillating,' Perrotta said. I was totally on board with that, but I think in terms of what those scenes actually looked like, they were really figured out between Kathryn, the director, and the intimacy coordinator. And I was pretty much like, That sounds great.'

Kathryn Hahn in Mrs. Fletcher

Sarah Shatz/HBO

The author and actor quickly earned each others trust, meeting over lunch to discuss the part I remember all I kept saying to her when we met was like, I know what you can do. I know that youd be great at this. I just wanted to know that she wanted it! Perrotta said and each growing more excited about the adaptation through the others engagement.

I was enormously bolstered by his curiosity, Hahn said. I knew he was aware that [the production] needed to be surrounded by a lot of women and a lot of diverse voices. Knowing how aware he was, I was enormously bolstered by that. [But] because hed written it, I was very excited by his curiosity.

Hahn also had confidence in herself. At a time when awareness of whos writing womens roles is at an all-time high, the actress wasnt worried about Eves story stemming from a mans imagination.

It wasnt [a concern] to me because I knew that if was cast in it, then it would be me as the person, she said. I knew by the time it got to my [characters] personhood, it would be a collaboration. So I wasnt worried about that. I knew I would take care of myself. And at that point, I knew Nicole Holofcener was around to direct the pilot, and I also knew there was going to be an incredible group of women writers.

Also a producer on Mrs. Fletcher, Hahn worked closely with her directing team (including Holofcener on the pilot and Liesl Tommy, Carrie Brownstein, and Gillian Robespierre helming the other six episodes) and the predominantly female writing staff to focus Eves perspective in each scene. As Eve becomes more curious about the wide world of internet pornography and starts to put her wants first in the bedroom, Hahn made sure the scenes showing her characters porn habit were purposeful and clear.

Kathryn Hahn in Mrs. Fletcher

Sarah Shatz/HBO

We wanted to make sure what the porn was giving her was landing in a specific way into the real world; how were they releasing out into the world in a specific way, what she was gaining in specific ways, or what they were teaching her how they were moving her forward or into new paths, Hahn said. Its such a personal relationship with porn that one has, usually. Sometimes theres a partner who you can share it with, but usually its such a deep and personal path, and for her it really was. It was something that was so taboo and something that she thought she was never allowed to look at; it was such a Pandoras box to open up, so a lot of it was digging into what that relationship actually meant.

That started with Eves first glimpse of it, as she lays in bed, mindlessly scrolling for ideas of what to do with all her new free time, and she accidentally clicks on a porn site.

Thats such an important moment because its the first moment for her on this path, and that was definitely Nicole and I playing with [her reaction], Hahn said. [Its] not like Eve is turned on, but more like shes drawn in to this light. It was a new world of possibility more than it was [just porn]. It feels a little bit more existential to me. Porn is such a jumping-off point for her search for authenticity or just who she is underneath it all. So a lot of those scenes of her by herself, the thing that was imperative to me and all of us, that it was just her finding pleasure for herself and not anyone else. I was very proud of that.

Through thoughtful consideration like this and her astute attention to emotional details, Hahn has made Eves journey into more than just a mid-life sexual awakening. Her instincts lead her to make new friends, go after new opportunities, and expand her appetite for life, not just sex. In quick, addictive, half-hour episodes, Hahn and the team around her build incredible empathy and excitement around a personal, internal story. The interior life of Eve Fletcher is as fully realized as they come a first-person experience that everyone can share.

Mrs. Fletcher airs new episodes Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO.

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Mrs. Fletcher: Kathryn Hahns Brilliant Performance Stems From a Key Change to the Book - IndieWire

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CollegeNET, Inc., a leading provider of web-based on-demand technologies for higher education, today released the 2019 Social Mobility Index (SMI), a data-driven analysis that ranks four-year US colleges and universities according to how effectively they enroll students from low-income backgrounds and graduate them into well-paying jobs.

Schools with Strong and Sustained Social Mobility Track Records

As in 2018, public universities in California both the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems dominate the 2019 SMI rankings, accounting for more than half of the Top 20 spots this year. Four of those schools (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; California State University, Fresno; California State University, Long Beach; and California State University, Stanislaus) have ranked in the Top 20 for six consecutive years.

The CUNY system in New York City placed five schools in the 2019 SMI Top 20, including Baruch College, which continues to hold its #1 ranking for the fifth consecutive year.

Winston-Salem State University, in North Carolina, has ranked in the SMI Top 20 for five of the past six years.

Advancing Social Mobility on Campuses from Coast to Coast

In addition to the top performers above, other schools advancing social mobility include:

Rutgers University, Newark (Top 30 ranking for the past three years and #12 ranking in 2019); Wichita State University (Top 10 percent ranking for five of the past six years); University of California, San Diego (Top 10 percent ranking for the past five years); Notre Dame de Namur University, in Silicon Valley (Top 20 percent ranking in 2019); Old Dominion University (Top 10 percent ranking in 2019); New Mexico State University (Top 20 percent ranking in 2019); University of California, Santa Cruz (Top 10 percent ranking in 2019); University of California, Irvine (Top 5 percent ranking in 2019); and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Top 20 percent ranking in 2019).

The 2019 SMI now benchmarks 1,458 schools.

The Top 20 SMI Schools, 2019 Rankings

CUNY Bernard M Baruch College

California State University, Los Angeles

California State University, Fresno

CUNY Queens College

California State University, Channel Islands

California State University, San Bernardino

California State University, Long Beach

California State University, Stanislaus

CUNY Brooklyn College

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

California State University, Northridge

Rutgers University, Newark

Texas A&M International University

CUNY Lehman College

California State University, East Bay

CUNY Hunter College

California State University, Bakersfield

California State University, Fullerton

California State University, Monterey Bay

California State University, Dominguez Hills

Read more about the 2019 SMI rankings and methodology here.

Redefining the Notion of Prestige in Higher Education

Founded on the principle that growing economic disparity in this country is the most pressing problem of our time, the SMI seeks to redirect the attribution of "prestige" in our higher education system toward colleges that are advancing economic opportunity and social mobility.

Unlike other college rankings that are aimed primarily at helping students select a college, says CollegeNET President Jim Wolfston, the SMI helps families and policymakers determine which colleges are addressing the national problem of economic mobility. Administrators have a better chance to help strengthen US economic mobility and the promise of the American Dream if they can identify and learn from colleges that are skilled at doing this.

Given that the US is now the least economically mobile among developed nations, says Wolfston, it is irresponsible to say an education institution is better because it has a huge endowment, or because it admits students with higher SAT scores which are most tightly correlated to family income. It is irresponsible to say an institution is better because it drives up admissions application counts, turns away more students and then boasts about selectivity. In todays world, where the American Dream is threatened, real prestige must accord to universities that educate and advance all motivated students, regardless of their economic background. This is the prestige that the Social Mobility Index seeks to promote.

Higher Educations Vital Role in the Learning Age

Higher Education is the most important asset in the Learning Age, adds Wolfston, who recently delivered a keynote address at Old Dominion Universitys Social Mobility Symposium. If we can distribute this vital asset across the economic spectrum, we can optimize our nations human capital development, prepare the next generation for citizenship and ensure social and economic opportunity. Most importantly, by rejecting the current trend toward on-campus economic homogeneity, a higher education institution can offer its students the chance to encounter a more challenging mix of people with diverse ideas, perspectives and backgrounds. Collisions with the unexpected and unfamiliar are what best sharpen and prepare innovative minds. Thus, economic inclusion is not only a solution to a social justice issue, it is an optimizing strategy for training tomorrows innovators.

Acknowledging Institutional Excellence

CollegeNET acknowledges schools that are advancing social mobility through innovative programs. CollegeNET presents the annual Social Mobility Innovator Awards to student success leaders from US colleges and universities at the Social Mobility Summit an annual forum on economic inclusion and best practices for student success held in Portland, Oregon, each summer. CollegeNET recently published an e-book that describes best practices from student success professionals pioneering innovative programs that support underserved and underrepresented students academic, personal and financial needs. Further, CollegeNET sponsors regional conferences to debate and discuss social mobility issues. Recent on-campus events have been held at the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of California, San Diego; Wichita State University; Winston-Salem State University; and Notre Dame de Namur University. CollegeNET-sponsored student success events are scheduled to take place at Rutgers University, Newark and New Mexico State University in 2020.

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Sixth Annual Social Mobility Index (SMI) Highlights Performance and Pitfalls as Attention to Social Mobility Grows Among US Colleges and Universities...

As PC gamers we're used to running into big problems with our games: crashes, freezes, conflicts, game-ending bugs, and major performance issues. But sometimes it's the little problems that irritate us the most. A minor issue can pop up and, over time, turn into a major headache in what is an otherwise fun and enjoyable gaming experience.

It could be something as simple as a small issue with a game's audio, loading screens that just take a bit too long, or a tiny, occasional hiccup in your framerate that nags at you like a persistent mosquito, slowly stressing you out until you're a seething ball of rage. And sometimes we spend more time trying to solve this one little issue than we do playing the game, leading to even more frustration.

Which brings us to our question this week: What minor issue completely ruined an otherwise great game for you? You'll find our answers below and we'd love to see yours in the comments.

I had a lot of fun goofing around Remedy's Kafka-does-the-X-Files spookhouse, or at least I did until it was undone by the true enemy: persistent stuttering. And before anyone jumps in with their voodoo fix, trust me, I tried them all. Some helped a little, but none eliminated the periodic microstutter that left me never able to trulyrelax into the game's rich stew of telekinetic combat and bonkers conspiracy lore.

In the end I had to switch down to DX11, saying goodbye to all the fancy (and frame-rate-hogging) ray-tracing. And still it wasn't smooth. Eventually I found myself holding my breath waiting for the next hitch. The stutter haunted me like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart heart but in the form of an unignorable performance issue. I know that the problem is really with me. That a normal person would be able to overlook such a small issue and appreciate the overall experience. But reader, I am not wired that way. And I suspect neither are you.

I was really excited for this game, but when I finally got my hands on it, all the dialogue in cutscenes was just a second out of sync. It may seem like not that big a deal, but as any student of comedy knows, when it comes to gags, timing is everythingthis bug totally ruined that. It bothered me so much that I ended up putting the game down completely shortly after the first mission.

For months I kept an eye out for patches, loading up the game fresh each time one installed and finding to my disappointment the problem persisted. As I recall I even made some angry posts on theSteam forums, raging about the devs cruelly failing to fix this obviously crucial bug.

Of course, it turned out to be my fault. My PC at the time was overclocked, and somehow that was making the game run slightly faster than the audio could keep up with. I turned down my settings and it worked fine. Sigh.

I used to play games on a 486SX that ran at a whole 25 MHz, so I have a high tolerance for performance issues. That said, I won't play any of the modern Total War games on a PC without an SSD. The loading times are ridiculous otherwise, and there's a lot of loading when you're switching back and forth between the campaign map and individual battles.

At the end of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, the narrator tells the tale of how you saved the world and what happened as a result of the choices you made. But something went funky with my audio when I reached the endgame, so all I got was a roaring static noise, and since there were no subtitles I had no idea wtf happened. My moment of triumph, stolen away by a loud:

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

"Ruined" is probably overstating it, but man, I was pissed.

So it's not a performance issue with the game itself, necessarily, but a problem with the invisible logic of existence, a personal performance issue. There was a period of time in which I was pretty damn good at Mortal Kombat. MK9 roped me back in, and as a fresh college graduate, I had a bit of spare time to practice. It was this whole thing, a void of time suddenly open to me, the first opportunity to think about and practice anything besides school: I'll get good at a fighting game, I thought. I watched all the YouTube tutorials, studied professional matches, practiced combos on a fancy arcade controller. I was good.

But my friend's nephew dragged my ass through the dirt, the button masher from my worst nightmares. I've loved and lost, I've trippedand busted my head on the pavement, I watched my dog die. Nothing really feels as bad as an 12-year-old kida voice cracking, next summer's acne invisibly vibrating in the air around him, a tiny head on a pile of long and thin limbs, their stupid fucking facebeating you, no sweat, at a fighting game. Kid just mashed. All my practice, wasted. You can't predict the devil's next move. I knew that I could take my skills to a grounded competitive scene and have fun, feel validated. But just knowing all it takes is an open-palm slap to undo months of work? Nah. Fighting games are over for me.

In playing the Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition years ago I was constantly at odds with its skills screen. Every time I had points to spend on upgrading Geralt's abilities I might as well have rolled a die to find out if I'd get stuck in the game's menu. At least 1/3 of the time I tried to level up or meditate I'd find everything on the screen unclickable. The Witcher would refuse to respond as if the game itself were roleplaying as its stone-faced protagonist.

Eventually I'd either force quit to desktop or click furiously enough times that the menu would wake up and remember its one job. Times when I could open the skill menu and have no trouble at all were so few and far between that I remember being actuallyexcitedthat it worked. It didn't ruin the entire game for me, but if you ask me about The Witcher on any given day I can guarantee this is the first thing I'll mention remembering about it.

Not a performance issue, but a design one. I would get put into the game map every time, a slaughter farm-esque arena with generators and big meat hooks dripping with blood. There wasn't a way to select which map you wanted to play outside of a private match. It's totally random, or supposed to be anyway. (Actually, I last played Dead by Daylight so long ago, I don't think there were many maps to begin with.)

The first several times I played a match I got put into the same map, which got old real fast. The game has evolved since then, adding new maps as DLC content, but the only way you can increase your chances of getting a certain map is to use an offering, which are specificobjects thrown into the campfire to convenienceThe Entity to give you what you want. Cool concept, but there's still an issue with getting the same map over and over again,even when you use an offering and have all the DLC content. I'm not sure how the game's matchmaking process works, but it seems like if you get matched with someone who only has the base game, you're going to get put into the same map no matter what.

So, long story short, I stopped playing Dead by Daylight because it got repetitive in a not-so fun way.

For a while, while playing Destiny 2's framerate would, for lack of a better word, hiccup. This wasn't performance-related either: no matter where my character was, or what I happened to be doing, the frameratewould hitch every few seconds, but would still register as 60 FPS. I think I even nuked my windows installation from orbit in an attempt to rectify the situation but to no avail.

This is admittedlyone of the larger caveats of PC gaming, as you can spend just as much time trying to rectify some minor issue as you can actually spend with the game itself.

I'd truly love to spend more time in GTA Online, but the process of joining a session is always a frustrating one for me. It'll seem like I'm in but I'll get that overhead view of the city and the camera will just hang there for ages as it continues searching for a session. Eventually it'll give up and kick me into singleplayer mode for maybe one whole secondjust enough time for the camera to find Michael in the cityat which point it will yank me back up to the sky again and then deposit me in GTA Online properly. Once I'm in, it runs great and I have a good time playing, but the long wait and brief dump into singleplayer mode is excruciating.

I don't know why it happens. I don't know why it can't find a session until the very moment it gives up looking and stuffs me into Michael, but it happens nearly every time and it's the main reason I rarely even try to play GTA Online.

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What minor issue ruined an otherwise great game for you? - PC Gamer

The following 'success story' was submitted to OrilliaMattersby the Orillia Area Community Development Corporation:

Starting a business in an already crowded industry can be daunting for some. For Brandon Peacock, it was an exciting opportunity to carve out his niche and break away from the crowd.

Unlike most gyms, Peak Performance is a studio focused on functional fitness, quality movement, and elite personal training.

Being a former employee of Anytime Fitness and Barrie Athletic Club, Peacock saw the need for business professionals to have access to an elite gym where they could receive high quality training.

Peacock sayshe wanted to create something exclusive for his clients.

In order to start his new concept, Peacock knew he required financial support and a solid plan.

Susan Stacey, Loans Officer at the Orillia Area CDC, worked with Peacock to develop a financial plan, secure a loan, and develop projections.

She asked me questions that I never even thought about. Her advice was extremely helpful and made me think about things from a different perspective, he said.

When Peak Performance got off the ground, Peacock began to work exclusively with business professionals, improving their overall fitness through core prep, mobile strength training, rehabilitation, and body mechanics.

He worked with each client to develop a personalized plan for their body in order to help them achieve their fitness goals. His brand was built on providing a high quality service to his members.

After two years in business, many of Peacock's clients had asked him about training their children in sports, so he reached out to Taylor Bazinet, a certified athletic trainer and performance coach, to bring an athletic component to the gym.

The Orillia Area CDC stepped in again and provided Bazinet with funding to buy into Peacock's business as a partner, and expand the gyms overall offering.

Over the years, the CDC has introduced us to so many influential connections in our community helping us to grow our customer base. They are phenomenal.

In just a few short years, Peacock and his partner Bazinet have experienced rapid growth and success. They have already expanded their business once, adding 1,200 square feet to the building in 2017, and are looking at an additional expansion later this year.

Through his journey, Peacock learned the importance of creating a well thought-out plan.

Doing a lot of research to understand the market, working hard every day and not being afraid to ask for help from the Orillia Area CDC were all vital to making this gym a reality," said Peacock.

To get in touch with Peak Performance, call705-826-1169 or visit their website.

For more information on the Orillia Area Community Development Corp. (CDC), please contact info@orilliacdc.com or visit http://www.orilliacdc.com

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Strength of CDC helps Peak Performance flex its muscles - OrilliaMatters

Synthetic biologists working on a U.S. Army project have developed a process that could lead to a new class of synthetic polymers that may create new high-performance materials and therapeutics for Soldiers.

Nature Communications published research conducted by Army-funded researchers at Northwestern University, who developed a set of design rules to guide how ribosomes, a cell structure that makes protein, can incorporate new kinds of monomers, which can be bonded with identical molecules to form polymers.

"These findings are an exciting step forward to achieving sequence-defined synthetic polymers, which has been a grand challenge in the field of polymer chemistry," said Dr. Dawanne Poree, program manager, polymer chemistry at the Army Research Office. "The ability to harness and adapt cellular machinery to produce non-biological polymers would, in essence, bring synthetic materials into the realm of biological functions. This could render advanced, high-performance materials such as nanoelectronics, self-healing materials, and other materials of interest for the Army."

Biological polymers such as DNA, have precise building block sequences that provide for a variety of advanced functions such as information storage and self-replication. This project looked at how to re-engineer biological machinery to allow it to work with non-biological building blocks that would offer a route to creating synthetic polymers with the precision of biology.

"These new synthetic polymers may enable the development of advanced personal protective gear, sophisticated electronics, fuel cells, advanced solar cells and nanofabrication, which are all key to the protection and performance of Soldiers," Poree said.

"We set out to expand the range of ribosomal monomers for protein synthesis to enable new directions in biomanufacturing," said Michael Jewett, the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, professor of chemical and biological engineering, and director of the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. "What's so exciting is that we learned the ribosome can accommodate more kinds of monomers than we expected, which sets the stage for using the ribosome as a general machine to create classes of materials and medicines that haven't been synthesized before."

Recombinant protein production by the ribosome has transformed the lives of millions of people through the synthesis of biopharmaceuticals, like insulin, and industrial enzymes that are used in laundry detergents. In nature, however, the ribosome only incorporates natural amino acid monomers into protein polymers.

To expand the repertoire of monomers used by the ribosome, Jewett's team set out to identify design rules for linking monomers to Transfer ribonucleic acid, known as tRNAs. That is because getting the ribosome to use a new monomer is not as simple as introducing a new monomer to the ribosome. The monomers must be attached to tRNAs, which are the molecules that carry them into the ribosome. Many current processes for attaching monomers to tRNAs are difficult and time-consuming, but a relatively new process called flexizyme enables easier and more flexible attachment of monomers.

To develop the design rules for using flexizyme, the researchers created 37 monomers that were new to the ribosome from a diverse repertoire of scaffolds. Then, they showed that the monomers that could be attached to tRNAs could be used to make tens of new peptide hybrids. Finally, they validated their design rules by predictably guiding the search for even more new monomers.

"With the new design rules, we show that we can avoid the trial-and-error approaches that have been historically associated with developing new monomers for use by the ribosome," Jewett said.

These new design rules should accelerate the pace in which researchers can incorporate new monomers, which ultimately will lead to new bioproducts synthesized by the ribosome. For example, materials made of protease-resistant monomers could lead to antimicrobial drugs that combat rising antibiotic resistance.

The research is part of the Department of Defense's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives program, supported by ARO, in which Jewett is working with researchers from three other universities to reengineer the ribosome as a biological catalyst to make novel chemical polymers. ARO is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory.

"It's amazing that the ribosome can accommodate the breadth of monomers we showed," Jewett said. "That's really encouraging for future efforts to repurpose ribosomes."

Research paper

Related Links U.S. Army Research Laboratory Space Technology News - Applications and Research

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Army project may lead to new class of high-performance materials - Space Daily

As a World Wrestling Entertainment superstar who's required to stay in fighting shape year-round, John Cena diet is "boring," he told Bon Appetit in 2018 he usually drinks four glasses of milk with four scoops of meal replacement protein powder for breakfast, for example.

There is, however, at least one exception to his healthy regimen: Before Cena performs, he anxiously eats his way through three boxes of Tic Tacs, he said on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" on NBC, Friday.

Downing the candy is his ritual.

"It's a nervous superstition that I always have before we go on a broadcast," Cena, a 16-time World Champion and one of the highest-paid wrestlers in the WWE, told Clarkson. He typically eats the Tic Tacs about 20 minutes before he has to compete on live television, he said.

"It's pretty much 10,000 calories in straight sugar," Cena said. (In reality, a single mint Tic Tac is only 1.9 calories, and a standard pack contains 60 Tic Tacs, so three boxes would be 342 calories. Plus, Tic Tacs are made with the sugar alcohol maltodextrin, not "straight sugar," as Cena said.)

Cena said the candy is a necessity, given that wrestlers compete in a "small, confined space."

"The ring is 20 by 20 feet, and you're with a group of guys, so you always want to try to smell your best," Cena said. The rigorous WWE touring schedule doesn't always allow for sleep or personal hygiene, so he turned to mints to keep his breath fresh.

In addition to Cena, many other professional athletes and successful CEOs have their own rituals or quirks that they say help their performance.

Retired NBA point guard Jason Terry would always eat fried or rotisserie chicken before games, for example. "I can't deviate from chicken," he told the The New York Times in 2013. "It has to be chicken."

Other rituals have nothing to do with food. Jeff Bezos has a pair of lucky cowboy boots that he wears when his space company, Blue Origin, has test flights. Similarly, tennis champ Serena Williams reportedly wore the same pair of socks throughout the course of a tournament, the The New York Times reported in 2013.

And golfer Tiger Woods always keeps three tees in his right pocket for good luck, and marks his golf balls with a quarter from the year his dad was born, 1932, he told Golf Digest in 2019.

Research actually supports these idiosyncrasies, even if they seem random. A 2014 study found that following a superstition or having a lucky charm improves people's self-efficacy, or their belief that they can perform. When people have higher self-efficacy, they tend to set more ambitious goals and persist at them.

Another 2018 study out of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University found that people take more risks when they engage in a superstitious act.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC and CNBC.

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John Cena's 'nervous superstition' is eating 3 boxes of this candy before a WWE show - CNBC

CLEVELAND Just over two years ago, Gordon Hayward was stuck to the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse court after suffering a broken leg and a dislocated ankle.

Tuesday night, Hayward was stuck to the court for a different reason: he was downright unstoppable, and Brad Stevens couldnt take him off of it.

Hayward performed at a historic level during Bostons 119-113 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. He became the first player since the inception of the 3-point line to shoot 16-for-16 from inside the arc, and the first player since Wilt Chamberlain in 1967 to shoot 16-for-16 on 2-pointers, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

Thats worth repeating: first player ever, and first player since Wilt.

Hayward laughed in response to that first note and said, Seems like a pointless stat to me, but this performance was anything but pointless. It was, as Kemba Walker called it, nuts.

It was also monumental, because it stands as the latest and most overwhelming evidence that Hayward is no longer the former All-Star whos attempting to regain his old form. He is back, and believe it or not, hes actually better than ever.

Hayward has never been better than he was Tuesday night in Cleveland. He matched his career high with 39 points while setting a new personal mark for made field goals with 17. Hayward also dished out a season-best and game-best eight assists to go along with seven rebounds. In comparison, his other 39-point game as a pro featured three fewer made field goals, three fewer assists, and four fewer rebounds.

I think theres obviously been more opportunities this year, he said after the game, which was his third in six contests with at least 21 points. Were running some things that I am comfortable doing. As long as I keep attacking, not overthinking the game, being hesitative, I should be fine.

He was fiiiiine Tuesday night, as he made the right play nearly every time he touched the ball.

Clevelands defensive game plan was to stick to Bostons shooters and rollers, rather than to get the ball out of the hands of the ball handler. In many cases, that was Hayward.

This defensive tactic provided Hayward with consistent and high-quality driving and shooting lanes. He took advantage of those opportunities by painting an arc around the basket of made shots. He shot 9-for-9 on shots from eight to 13 feet, including two that came off of his patented plant-and-spin move.

Just kinda taking advantage of my size in the paint, Hayward said of those shots. I think its something I can get to if I stay under control and poised in there. But certainly, around the rim there, kinda with different floaters and leaners, slow-steps, things like that, is something Im pretty comfortable doing.

Stevens has seen Hayward play to that comfort zone quite often of late, and not only in games.

First of all, hes got that great ability to hit the floater, but he can also stop and do the little fade, and he shoots that all the time in practice, the coach said. Today, that was where he was living mostly.

Hayward was living his best life in the short mid-range, but what made him indefensible was that when that wasnt open, he made the right play for his teammates. The majority of his eight assists came off of perfect reads when the defense committed to him rather than to taking away his teammates.

They did eventually start trapping him, Stevens commented. He hit Rob (Williams) for a couple of those dunks, (Daniel) Theis a couple times. He played really well. Certainly, you always felt like you could get a bucket because of the way he was reading things today.

The Celtics got bucket after bucket while riding Hayward all the way to the finish line. He was dominant, he was historic, and he was downright unstoppable in Cleveland.

Following the performance, Hayward had only one request. It was sent to his teammates, who continued their custom that dates back to last season of showering him with water following a big-time performance.

Hopefully they can maybe stop dumping water on me, too, after every good game, he said with a smile.

Truth be told, with the way he has played this season, highlighted by his career-best performance Tuesday night on the court where he was devastatingly injured, they might run out of water if they try to continue that tradition.

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Hayward Dazzles with Historic and Career-Best Performance in Cleveland - Celtics.com

ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. Amid continuing attacks on her family, Jill Biden has a simple message for President Donald Trump: Stop it. My husband's going to beat you.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Monday, Jill Biden said that the efforts by the president and his Republican allies to draw her extended family into the campaign will backfire. But she also acknowledged that the attacks have gone beyond even what she expected.

The fact that he attacked my son, I have never seen that in other elections, that they go after children of the candidate, she said. He's just trying to distract the voters. You know what Donald Trump did was wrong, flat-out wrong. Calling a foreign leader and asking them and holding back foreign aid unless he investigated my husband, my son that is just flat-out wrong and I think that the American people see that, I think the people in Congress see that and they're going to stand up to him.

Her comments came as part of her first extended solo national interview of the campaign, as she stumped for her husband in this must-win state for the former vice president. And they come as the president and Republicans in Congress have called for Hunter Biden to testify in the House impeachment hearings beginning this week about his past business dealings in Ukraine.

By her own admission, Jill Biden was never a natural as a 'political spouse,' writing in her memoir released earlier this year that she preferred to stay in the background early in Joe Biden's political career and even more so when the national spotlight turned on them in 2008.

But there has been a marked change in her campaign trail performance as she shares more personal stories about her and her husband, surprising even him at an event in New Hampshire on Friday by talking about his family upbringing. Shes also shown a feistier side.

At a rally with her husband before the recent Iowa Liberty and Justice Celebration, she immediately launched into a story about the time she punched a neighbor who had been bullying her sister.

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I hate bullies, she said. Nothing make me angrier than seeing someone abuse their power to make others feel small.

On Monday, Jill Biden wouldnt go so far as to say Trump was a bully, but made it clear how she views him.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden are just polar opposites," she said. "And that's why I think people are looking for the qualities in a leader they want a strong leader, they want a resilient leader, she said.

In his long career, Joe Biden has cultivated a reputation for his authenticity. But former and current Jill Biden staffers universally describe her as a real person in a different context, noting both her reticence toward traditional politics, her occasionally rebellious and subversive sense of humor and her passion for Philadelphia sports and her own career.

As with her husband, sometimes that realness can backfire. She raised eyebrows this summer when she told an audience of Democratic and independent voters in New Hampshire that they might have to swallow a bit and support her husband even if they might like another candidate better.

Jill Biden said Monday that comment was misconstrued, as she spoke specifically to an audience who had already shared with her whom they were supporting. But she did say electability was still critical.

I think the beauty of our political system is that anybody can get in to run for president, but I think Joe is the best qualified. I think he's ready on day one. He's steady, he'll be a steady commander in chief. And he knows the job, he has experience, he's ready on day one, she said.

Biden downplayed her role as an adviser to her husband but made it clear she would continue to advocate on the issues important to her, especially education and veterans.

She decided this summer to continue her teaching career even as she expected to step up her time on the campaign trail. She will face another decision again soon about whether to continue in the spring semester, just as voters will be determining the nominee in primaries and caucuses across the country.

In 2009, she became the first "second lady" to continue her professional work into the White House. What Jill Biden is not yet clear about is whether she can do the same if her husband returns there as president.

How great would that be? What would that say about teachers? Wouldn't that lift up the profession and celebrate who they are? It would be my honor, she said.

Jill Biden says her time on the campaign trail has already affected her in ways she didnt expect. In her book, she describes struggling with her faith after Beau Bidens death, how it drew her husband closer to the church but pushed her away. But during a trip with her husband to a South Carolina church, she found surprising comfort in the experience.

I think so many people have prayed for me that I need to return that, that kindness to others as well. So I'm working my way back, she said.

But she added that she still thinks about Beau every day, including how this campaign might have been different if he had beaten cancer.

You know Beau was so involved in the process, he so wanted his dad to be president, she said. I thought maybe this could have been Beau's campaign.

Mike Memoli is an NBC News correspondent.

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Jill Biden's message to Donald Trump: 'Stop it. My husband's going to beat you.' - NBC News

Toward the start of a 1993 recording of Proud Mary, Tina Turnerwho, by then, had been performing the number for decades, across the globegives a charismatic, gently teasing forecast of the song to come.

Were gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy. But then were gonna do the finish rough, she says. Thats the way we do Proud Mary. Her voice, sharp and feline and cunning, rushes forward, tossing each syllable into a fast-moving current, until she stops to hold a choice wordeasy; roughup to the warm light of her attention. Her diction, in its variance, mirrors what shes disclosing about the song. Somehow the road map does nothing to dissipate the impact of the moment when the rolling thrum of guitars that dominates the first half of Proud Mary gives way to horns blasting out that melodic line, and the mental image of Turner spinning in tight circles, wig ablur, arms tutted out like twin cranes, tassels floating away from her body, arrives. What we lose in tonal and rhythmic suspense we gain in a more primal kind of anticipation. Yes, it will get rough, eventuallybut when, and just how rough?

A similar thing happens when we hear Turners life story. Most of us know it in its broadest contours. Born Anna Mae Bullock, as a child she picked cotton on her familys sharecropping farm, in Nutbush, Tennessee, and pined for her mother, who fled Turners abusive father. In the first two decades of her career, her success was linked inextricably with her musical partner and husband, who physically abused her. The question, when the story is being told onscreen or onstage, is never whether these vicissitudes will be included but how brutally, and to what representational end.

Even when Turners music is part, or most, of the promised packageas it is in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, up now at the Lunt-Fontanne, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, with a book by Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar, and Kees Prins, and with seriously impressive choreography by Anthony Van Laastits her life that delivers the dramatic shape expected from art: tension and release, fall and climb, pain and possibility. This makes Turner perhaps singular among pop artists. Usually we have to employ a kind of textualismcombing lyrics and gestures for a corollary in realityto assign to our stars moral, cultural, and political values. Or an artist makes bold-sounding declarations, or endorses electoral candidates, or embraces high-profile causes. With Turner, even given all the innovation found in her records, the triumph is located in the life; her status as a feminist hero is stubbornly extramusicalit lives somewhere much past art, and beyond statements.

Its a paradox, then, that it was a pop-cultural representationthe 1993 movie Whats Love Got to Do with It, starring Angela Bassett as Turnerthat made Turners political importance clear to generations too young to have tracked her entire career, and made her iconography complete. For more than two decades, Bassett, whose performance as Turner is perhaps the most brilliant and haunting of her career, has dominated the collective imagination with respect to Turner, and, in many ways, has made Tina Turners art a mere corollary to Anna Mae Bullocks life. Turners most famous songsProud Mary, Whats Love Got to Do with It, Simply the Bestnow sound to my ears like autobiographical anthems, meant as a score instead of a corpus of their own.

The great benefit of this situation is clear: we learn from lives, and every saint needs a story. But, because Turners canonization has proceeded within the limits of commercial entertainment, her life often seems at risk of being objectified in the way that can happen with a song, or a scene from a blockbuster. Whenever I hear the rapper Jay-Z, in a guest verse on a song by his wife, Beyonc, flippantly drone, Eat the cake, Anna Maea line from Whats Love Got to Do with It that comes during one of the movies most humiliatingly violent momentsI recoil. I wonder if the magic of the moviesthe semi-permanent stamp that some pictures make on the mindmight chip away at Turners hard-earned gravitas, just as surely as, initially, it helped build her myth.

Tina, a genuinely entertaining jukebox musical with some trouble at its edges, has this odd, precariously balanced mixture of life and art, politics and spectacle, as its burden. Maybe its creators were wise, then, to organize the story around Turners religious experienceher childhood in the rural black church, her turn to a lifelong, cherished Buddhism. The show opens with a temporal swirl: the adult Tina (Adrienne Warren) sits wearing a Corvette-red leather dress, her back to the crowd, rasping out a mantra, as her very young counterpart (a charming Skye Dakota Turner, no relation to Tina) sits through a jubilant musical number at church, unable to restrain her voice, despite the chiding of her mother. Skye Dakota Turner is a wonderfully vivid performer; theres humor in every facial move and bodily gesture, and she sings with precocious, echoing focus, like a bird perched on a cathedrals upper balcony.

That opening image, whose surrealism gives way to a more or less straightforward, chronological slide down the time line of Tina Turners life, feels like an attempt to reunify Turner and her work, and to give a hint as to their source. Some soul-deep fountain produced both. Tina grows up, and Warren, a powerful singer and song interpreter whose reputation deserves to grow after this performance, takes over. She gives little glimmers of impersonation, especially when she sings, but mostly avoids distracting mimicry.

The trouble comes when this musicals version of Anna Mae Bullock meets this musicals version of Ike Turner (Daniel J.Watts). The real Ike Turners very namethrough a pop-cultural process not unlike the one that turned Tinas into an emblem of long-suffering resilienceis now almost synonymous with cowardly violence and petty bullying; his pioneering role in the development of rock and roll has been all but eclipsed by his notoriety as a sadist. Nobody mentions Ike and means to refer to the Fender bass named for him. But here, somehow, likely because Warren is so good, and because the songsmostly note-for-note renderings of the well-known recordingskeep on coming, Ike comes off more as a comic buffoon than as a real menace. I dont think this is due to any odd intent on behalf of the shows producers but, rather, to the distorting imperatives of mass entertainmenttell the story, but keep it light.

Everybody knows, even before he shows up, that Ike is the villain in the Tina Turner story. On Broadway, under what looks like a thousand lights, in front of a crowd impatient to cheer, this makes him a chintzy Big Bad Wolf. Then, too, Watts, the poor actor tasked with this role, has an irremediably friendly face and funny aspect. From afar, he looks and moves a bit like Eddie Murphy, and, when I saw the show, he sometimes, at the most despicable moments, garnered what seemed to be accidental laughs.

For the most part, the show is fun. The songs sound good, and nobodys high opinion of Tina Turner will be negatively affected. Very much to the contrary, Warrens performance, which sometimes veers happily into an outright concert, is a two-and-a-half-hour-long hosanna. But I couldnt help hoping that, in the long run, Turner will be given her true due, her personal history plumbed for its deepest applications. This great theatrical rendering of her life might come only when living memory of Turner as an entertainer has faded, and her bright intensity as an archetype can shine through, unhindered by obligatory applause. The mood will be classical. Nobody will think to hope for a good time.

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The Legend of Tina Turner - The New Yorker