Do you know a co-worker with a side hustle?

Jennifer Nahrgang, professor and Henry B. Tippie Excellence Chair of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa, discusses how it might affect them at work.

Jennifer D. Nahrgang is Professor and Henry B. Tippie Excellence Chair of Management and Entrepreneurship in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on leadership and teams, employee voice and engagement, and the future world of work. Her research has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and Harvard Business Review.

When someone starts a side hustle, it might change how they do their day job.

But not always in a good way. My research has found that when people have a successful side gig, their behavior at their full-time job often becomes less than friendly to co-workers and managers. You could almost say they become jerks.

We surveyed 200 employees who also have side hustles. We included their colleagues at their day job, too, to see what impact the second job has on the first.

We found they began to show more hostility to their coworkers – by feeling angry, irritated and annoyed with them. Not only does this alienate them from co-workers and create a more difficult workplace, we found it also reduces their productivity.

Our research found this behavior is caused by a loss of control. Side hustlers are so used to the autonomy they have in their second job that the relative rigidity and lack of control in their full-time job starts to wear on them. They have so much freedom in their side gigs that they begin to feel boxed in by their full-time jobs. That frustration takes the form of lashing out and other counterproductive behaviors.

But we also found an upside to side gigs in that they can improve performance in the employee’s day job. Rather than getting angry, employees can opt to deal with their frustrations by increasing initiative in their full-time jobs and restore control over their work. This not only keeps their frustrations in check, it also benefits their work performance.

What solutions do managers have when their side gigging employees are not playing nice with co-workers? We found counterproductive behavior can be mitigated if managers provide more autonomy to their side hustling employees so they feel less boxed in.

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Shopping from home can also be bad for the environment.

Jose Holguin-Veras, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute, explores ways to reduce vehicle emissions during shipping.

Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor, and Director of the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment; and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1981; his M.Sc. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1984; and his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1996. He has been a faculty at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, City College of New York (1997-2002), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2002-present). His work has received numerous awards, including the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award for his contributions to freight transportation and disaster response. His research emphasizes the integration, synthesis, and projection of the knowledge that exist in multiple disciplines to produce solutions to the complex and multifaceted problems—which have proven to be too complex to be solved by single-disciplinary approaches—that impact freight transportation and humanitarian logistics. His research taps into the knowledge of social sciences to build more realistic mathematical models of humanitarian logistics, and integrate cutting edge economic principles into freight transportation modeling, so that a complete picture could be developed on the broader impacts of transportation activity on the economy and the environment; and on the most effective ways to conduct post-disaster humanitarian logistics. His research blends field research and measurements, applied and basic research to ensure that theory relates to reality; and, ultimately, to a set of actionable policy recommendations that contribute to the betterment of the economy and society.

Believe it or not, the number of ecommerce deliveries to households is more the double the number of to businesses.  In New York City, more than 1.5 million packages are delivered each day to city residents.   In Los Angeles, the number is 700,000, and in Chicago half a million. 

These are staggering numbers. But, there’s more. The growth of online sales, combined with rapid delivery options, has increased traffic congestion in large cities, and emissions in the entire country because of the spike in truck travel.

Our research shows there are effective actions that we can take. For example, we designed and implemented an off-hours delivery program in New York City and found out by making deliveries overnight, a truck’s emissions were reduced by an estimated factor of 65 percent.

We’re now researching what alternatives may help reduce congestion and emissions generated by ecommerce. Recently, we conducted a survey of online shoppers and found that some are open to receiving packages in more sustainable ways including delivery to lockers, during night hours, or to workplaces; or simply selecting the slowest delivery option. Using this alternative enables freight carriers to increase efficiency, reduce congestion, emissions and air pollution.

As we continue our research, we hope political leaders use what we’ve found to design effective policies. Small adjustments, like these, will improve the environment, increase economic output, and enhance our quality of life.

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Food is the main event of most Thanksgivings.

Ashli Stokes, associate professor in the department of communication studies at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, discusses the importance of preparing something tasty for your family to enjoy this holiday.

Dr. Ashli Quesinberry Stokes is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and the Director of the Center for the Study of the New South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Stokes teaches a variety of public relations courses at the undergraduate and graduate level and directs the Department’s Honors Program. Her courses include principles of public relations, public relations strategy & campaigns, issues management, and health communication campaigns. Her award-winning research specializes in using rhetorical approaches to analyze public relations and public communication controversies, often concerning activism and corporate advocacy. Along with co-authoring Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South (with Wendy Atkins-Sayre) and Global Public Relations: Spanning Borders, Spanning Cultures(with Alan R. Freitag) Stokes has published in the Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Communication Management, Public Relations Review, the Southern Communication Journal, Studies in Communication Sciences, and theEncyclopedia of Public Relations, among others. Upon the completion of her master’s degree at Wake Forest University, she worked in public relations. Stokes then returned to academia and completed her doctorate at the University of Georgia in 2004.

If you have been asked to make a specific dish for Thanksgiving, be honored, not bothered. Research suggests that making your famous green bean casserole might help you to critically reflect on your culture and traditions while remaining grateful for them. While food means nutrition, we also build family, community, and cultural memories around it. Food acts rhetorically, with what we choose to eat and serve sending distinct messages.

The phrase “you are what you eat” may be cliché, yet there is truth in saying that food crafts part of who we are. When we watch a family member make the dressing (or stuffing, depending on where you are from), we are watching a ritual. The cook reenacts cultural practices that shape how we see others and ourselves and whether we identify with certain roles. Thanksgiving meals connect one generation to the next, bringing us together around a shared experience. We learn about who we are and who our families are, even through arguments about whether to cook the dressing in the turkey.

Food stories can open up dialogue. At regional restaurants, people of varied race, ethnicity, and class come together to experience a culture through its food. Even if they don’t know initially that they are connected, they are. In the American South, for example, corn that is ground into cornmeal for cornbread also forms the basis of tortillas for Mexican restaurants that increasingly dot Southern towns. Food emphasizes these common backgrounds, even if people feel they share nothing else. So eat your turkey or just the green beans if you are vegetarian. Talk about how the meal is made, who cooked what, and what it means to you. Your family members and friends gathered around the table might find that despite all your differences, you feel a shared sense of gratitude.

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Sustainable waste conversion techniques on Earth might one day be applied to colonies on the Moon or Mars.

Toufiq Reza, associate professor of chemical engineering in the department of chemistry and chemical engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, examines how.

Dr. Toufiq Reza is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech) in Melbourne, Florida. His primary research interests are thermochemical and biochemical conversion of biomass including HTC, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), supercritical water gasification (ScWG), torrefaction, pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion, wet air oxidation, and pelletization. He has published more than one hundred peer-reviewed journal articles, five patents, two book chapters, and delivered more than one hundred oral and poster presentations.

Here on Earth, human waste typically goes into a sewer or septic system, while trash goes into a landfill—some might be recycled, incinerated, composted, dumped out at sea or sent to a facility as part of a waste-to-energy process.

In orbit above the Earth, astronaut waste, such as food packaging, clothing, hygiene items and uneaten food, is launched back towards Earth and incinerates on the way there. But, as humans look further into space to colonize the Moon and Mars and perhaps eventually beyond, all of this must be processed by a system of sustainable waste conversion techniques.

My current focus is on exploring the development of effective methods of waste treatment in places beyond Earth’s orbit.

This means looking into the future, perhaps decades ahead. Because, historically, the approach on Earth has often been to develop settlements and communities first and deal with the trash later—but space explorers will need to have effective solutions in place at the very start as they begin colonization.

Some of my focus considers how my previous research on sustainable waste conversion techniques on Earth might be applied to Moon or Mars colony projects dealing with waste and resource recovery. To find sustainable new ways to convert trash and waste into energy, materials and chemicals.

Possibilities include creating carbon material we call biochar (a sort of charcoal) as well as nutrients to mix with Lunar or Mars regolith to grow crops, converting some of the plastics and other material that can be 3D printed to make habitat ready commodities or useful components, sorting out fibers from discarded garments for other uses with additional processing.

An added bonus–as we create new approaches that will work in a Martian or Lunar environment–is that those advancements might in turn be adaptable to sustainable waste management back on Earth.

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Media Experts Spotlight

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How can we make the jobs of substance abuse counselors easier?

Cailyn Green, Assistant Professor of Addiction Studies at SUNY Empire State University, examines one resource designed to do so.

Cailyn Green, MS, Ph.D., Masters-CASAC is the Assistant Professor of Addiction Studies at SUNY Empire State University. Her research in the substance use field a supported by her past clinical experience.

She earned her BA degree in psychology from Wester New England University, her MS degree in forensic mental health from Sage Graduate School and her Ph.D. in criminal justice with a specialization in addiction science from Walden University. Dr. Green is also a Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor in New York State. Dr. Greens area of expertise is supporting clinicians who work in the addiction field to best serve their clients. She spent her hands on clinical time working directly with the recently incarcerated population.

The Group Counseling Workbook was created to offer clinical counselors a free resource they can use to make their jobs a little bit easier. This workbook was first written for active counselors in the field and it can be used as an educational component for trainees, interns or new counselors as well as seasoned counselors. The Group Counseling Workbook is a free open education resource that anyone can download and change under its Creative Commons publication. 

This workbook was developed based on research I conducted investigating what resources could help our substance use counselors do their jobs. The research involved 15 participants who were all actively working as counselors in the substance use field. Their experience included working in inpatient, outpatient, residential and detox facilities. Their education ranged from associates degrees to masters degrees and years of working in the field varied from 1 to42 years. Participants who completed the qualitative interviews reported that lack of time and lack of free resources created stress in their daily work. They identified that they would use a group counseling resource to help them facilitate strong clinical group sessions.  

The goal of this Group Counseling Workbook is for counselors to use it for free, but also to hopefully send additional group counseling activities so we can continue to grow this free resource. This resource is being housed in the SUNY Empire State University online library. This free resource should lighten the workload for our substance use counselors who are actively working in the front lines.   

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Group Counseling Workbook

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We need new tools for wildfire prevention going forward.

Elahe Soltanaghai, assistant professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, aims to deliver one.

Elahe Soltanaghai is an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research spans the areas of wireless networking and sensing with applications in IoT, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Mixed Reality. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her PhD in Computer Science from University of Virginia. Her work has been published in premier conferences and journals in the areas of mobile and ubiquitous computing and network systems. She has been named one of the 10 Rising Star Women in Networking and Communications in 2021. She is also the recipient of Google Research Scholar Award (2022), and ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award (2021).

Wildfires are unpredictable, fast-moving, and devastating. Making them even harder to manage is fuel hidden beneath the trees – dry vegetation on the forest floor that can turn a small fire into an uncontrollable blaze. Traditional remote sensing tools struggle to see through the dense canopy and assess what’s underneath, leaving a critical gap in wildfire prediction and prevention.

That’s where our work comes in. We’re developing a drone-based system equipped with ultra-wideband radar that penetrates the canopy and maps understory fuel conditions with high precision – offering analysis that can estimate fuel load, moisture content, and distribution beneath the trees.

A key innovation in our system is the use of backscatter tags – tiny, battery-free devices that act as passive radar reflectors. These tags are strategically placed in fire-prone areas and are designed to enhance the radar’s ability to detect and characterize ground-level fuels. By modulating their reflections, the tags provide additional signal contrast, allowing us to differentiate dry vegetation from non-fuel objects like rocks or damp soil. This improves the accuracy of fuel mapping and enables continuous long-term monitoring without requiring power sources in the field.

Our system will also merge data from drones, radar, and satellites to build better wildfire prediction models. By equipping firefighters and forest managers with real-time data, this system has the potential to prevent disasters before they happen.

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On this Student Spotlight: Can we grow food on Mars?

Robert Cheatham, PhD student in chemical engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, digs into the regolith to find out.

Robert Cheatham is a PhD student and researcher pursuing a doctoral degree in chemical engineering at Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech) in Melbourne, Florida. An award-winning researcher, Cheatham earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering with a minor in nanotechnology and nanoscience from Florida Tech, where he served as president of the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He won best in show at the 2024 Northrup Grumman Showcase for his work on methanol conversion from cruise ship food waste, earned first place for his research in advanced chemically activated biochar, and was selected as the outstanding student of the year by Florida Tech’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

The future of space exploration calls for colonizing Mars in the decades ahead.  The top five commodities required for human settlement there are energy, oxygen, construction materials, water, and food. Science confirms that the first four are abundant in economically viable concentrations and in forms that can likely be extracted, obtained or created on Mars.

Food, however, remains the biggest challenge on the list. Given the significant payload weight associated with transporting food, colonists will need to grow much of what they will eat to survive.

The challenge is that the Martian regolith—the “soil” that exists there, as it stands alone with its poor water retention and low carbon content, is not the greatest “soil” for growing much of anything.

Regolith is primarily a bunch of metals. It’s basically all rust, much like the stuff that comes off of our shovels and other tools after they’ve been sitting in the tool shed for a few months.

And, just as we cannot send tons of food into space, we cannot ship tons of dirt to Mars for farming purposes. So we will need to work with the regolith, to enrich it and improve it, to grow crops to feed space colonists.

My research explores how we can modify the regolith to make something new that can be used for agriculture–and that will also hold and retain water, which will be an available yet precious commodity on Mars. We have confirmed that, by creating a composite substance by incorporating biochar, an activated carbon similar to charcoal produced from burning biomass, and mixing it with regolith, we can accomplish both.

The process creates a brand-new substance using heat, energy, and waste in which we can grow food.

It’s renewable and reusable.

And it’s not going to run out on Mars.

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On New York University Week: Eliminating bias in AI will require work.

Meredith Broussard, professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, examines strategies to do so.

Data journalist Meredith Broussard is a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several books, including “More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech” and “Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.”

My research is about the many ways that AI systems reproduce real-world biases and inequality. In my research I find that all AI systems discriminate by default.

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Grief carries many myths.

Jacob Sawyer, assistant professor of psychology at Alma College, determines what’s real and what’s not.

Jacob Sawyer is a counseling psychologist interested in factors related to mental health and well-being. His background and training as a clinician strongly inform his approach to his work as a faculty member. His career at Alma began in 2022.

Do beliefs that people endorse about grief and bereavement correspond with recent research findings? It is likely that some do not, even among mental health professionals.

For the past several decades, researchers have suggested that myths about grief and bereavement are fairly common. One common myth is the notion that most people need to engage in intensive emotional expression during bereavement, or “grief work”, as originally proposed by Sigmund Freud. Another is the belief in linear stage models of grief, such as the five stages of grief. Researchers have increasingly noted that grief does not progress through predictable stages, and have cautioned that the belief in stage models of grief could actually be harmful for the bereaved.

To assess beliefs and potential myths, my co-authors and I developed a survey with 12 statements about grief and bereavement, and analyzed data from a sample of mental health professionals and the general public. While mental health professionals were less likely to endorse myths about grief and bereavement compared to the general public, 85% percent of mental health professionals significantly overestimated the proportion of individuals who go on to develop intense, long-term distress during bereavement, and close to half endorsed a belief in stage models of grief. Similarly, 68% of the general public endorsed a belief in stage models of grief.

Findings from the study highlight the work that is still necessary in promoting what researchers have termed “grief literacy”, which consists of knowledge, skills, and values related to grief. Increased grief literacy is necessary for the general public, since we will all experience grief, and for mental health professionals, who will need to competently assist bereaved individuals in their clinical work.

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How long does it take for successful abstinence from substance use?

Rafaela Fontes, research scientist at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech University, takes a look.

Rafaela Fontes is a research scientist in the Addiction Recovery Research Center at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. Her work focuses on decision-making processes in individuals with substance use disorders (SUD), using models of choice to inform more effective treatments. She also investigates factors influencing recovery, aiming to identify diverse pathways that lead to successful outcomes across different substances.

She and her colleagues from the institute drew from the International Quit & Recovery for their recent research on substance use cessation.

Relapse is common when someone is trying to quit an addiction. And even though we know addiction is a chronic condition, we treat it as an acute disorder.

My colleagues and I wanted to answer this question: How many quit attempts are needed for successful abstinence? We also wanted to know if this number was different depending on the substance someone is trying to quit.

To find out, we recruited participants from the International Quit & Recovery Registry, a tool created by the late Dr. Warren Bickel to better understand success in overcoming addiction. We drew our findings from 344 people who reported abstinence from at least one substance. Their responses showed that some substances do require more attempts, and are harder to quit.

Opioids and pain medication required significantly more attempts than all other substances — with an estimated mean around 6 attempts. Notably, substances with a higher number of quit attempts are also the ones that can bring on severe physical withdrawal symptoms, like pain, nausea, and anxiety.

Our results also showed that it took more attempts for people with a more severe or longer history of substance use to achieve abstinence. That means that early intervention is better. For those on the severe end of the spectrum, more intense or a combination of interventions might be needed.

Importantly, these numbers might not be final for every participant, as we know that relapse is common. In our sample, the average time in abstinence was more than seven years across substances.

We hope these findings help inform treatment by demonstrating that each substance is associated with unique challenges. We also hope this helps people who are going through recovery. If they know failure is part of the process, they might be encouraged to stay the course, realizing they’ll get there eventually.

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