FlashFeed

Full text

Over half of Gen Z workers feel more productive working from home

34% of Gen Z workers believe their workplace does not allow them to focus effectively

The findings are the result of a survey conducted by Diamond Interiors and YouGov

A new survey has claimed Gen Z employees feel they’re at their most productive working from home, rather than in the workplace, flying in the face of those attempting to get people back into the office.

The Diamond Interiors report notes focusing on work is widely recognized as improving productivity, which might explain the challenge for Gen Z. Home can be quiet, distractions managed, and with the right setup, focused productivity can deliver early completion and potentially the option to finish work early. With a commute to a busy office, this may seem tougher to achieve.

With 53% claiming they feel more productive working from home rather than in the noisy office, the challenge here might not be so much getting people into the office, but what the office really represents.

20-somethings don’t like the office

Over the years, office-based environments have evolved, from closed rooms to open-plan operations, sometimes occupying an entire floor without walls. The noise – for instance in call centers – can be considerable, and the opportunities for distraction soon add up. Throw in the period of enforced remote working from 2020 to 2023, which may also have included a period of university study for Gen Z, and you have a generation that isn’t geared to handle distractions.

The report highlights that 53% of those surveyed in the Gen Z cohort believe that working from home makes them more productive, with 34% blaming the design of the workplace.

“These findings highlight an important challenge facing employers," noted Rebecca Waller, Head Of Design at Diamond Interiors. "While offices remain incredibly valuable for collaboration, many employees are telling us they do not always feel they have the right environment to focus on individual tasks.”

“In many cases, it is not necessarily because employees prefer being at home, but because home environments often offer greater control over noise, interruptions, and comfort.”

Is this the end of the office?

The big question isn’t “how do we successfully move on from the office” – at least, not yet. Rather, it seems to be that offices don’t offer the level of comfort and focus that Gen Z employees need. As Waller says “It is not necessarily because employees prefer being at home, but because home environments often offer greater control over noise, interruptions, and comfort."

She highlights that workspaces need to support methods of working that suit everyone, with open-plan layouts balanced with quieter areas, environments that can avoid distractions. If employers expect Gen Z team members to produce their best work, it’s going to be a choice between home working and finding a workplace design that fosters productivity, not distractions.

Full text

A change is coming to the codes OB-GYNs use to bill for maternity care services: Starting Jan. 1, 2027, we will shift from a bundled “global obstetric payment” to a fee-for-service model. This change impacts almost every U.S. family with a pregnancy. Under the current system, families receive a bill that does not distinguish the actual prenatal and postpartum costs from labor and delivery, which makes things incredibly confusing for patients.

In fact, the bundled payment’s impacts have been widespread: It has complicated billing for patients and clinicians, limited access to care, cut back the ability to provide patients with more personalized care, and slowed progress in better understanding U.S. maternal health outcomes.

Read the rest…

Full text

Engineers have created a drone that camouflages itself as a faint, hovering haze when it takes flight.

The "Phantom Twist" prototype drone is a carefully engineered robot that utilizes motion blur to hide in plain sight — opening up a new frontier in low-visibility flight. Scientists say it could reshape how drones monitor wildlife, survey ecosystems and inspect infrastructure.

Most stealth drones try to disappear by changing their appearance, using camouflage paint, transparent plastics or complex optical tricks to bend or scatter light. The Phantom Twist takes a fundamentally different approach by exploiting how humans and animals perceive motion.

The scientists who created the drone outlined their findings in a study presented July 16 at the conference Robotics: Science and Systems in Sydney, Australia.

"Most efforts to hide drones focus on making them look like their surroundings," said first author of the study Michael Rubenstein , associate professor of computing and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University, in a statement . "Instead, we asked whether we could design the drone itself around the way humans perceive motion.”

(Image credit: Michael Rubenstein/Northwestern University) The result is a machine that behaves more like a spinning fan than a conventional quadcopter. Typical drones have four rotors spinning around a largely stationary body, so your eye can lock onto the frame even as the propellers blur.

Phantom Twist strips this idea down to a single motor and single propeller. The propeller spins one way while the entire body counter‑rotates in the opposite direction with no stationary parts to visually latch on to — spinning 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to resolve clearly.

(Image credit: Michael Rubenstein/Northwestern University) It's about 10 times less visually perceptible than a conventional quadcopter, the scientists said. In practice, that means observers don’t see a crisp flying machine but a translucent smudge, with its few opaque components blending into a haze.

To get there, the team assigned algorithms to explore thousands of designs. First, they used a computational model to automatically generate about 20,000 drone configurations that could fly stably, at least in theory. Each configuration shuffled a motor, propeller, batteries, circuit board and counterweight into different positions.

Then artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization tools took over, iteratively rearranging those pieces to minimize how visible each design would be from almost any viewing angle — all while respecting the constraints of aerodynamic stability.

The researchers simulated each candidate spinning in midair and composited the images over 100 different real-world backgrounds, from skies to trees to buildings.

To determine the stealthiest designs, they applied a perception model that approximated human vision, with drones that better blended into their surroundings earning a lower visibility score. From there, the team selected the 500 lowest-scoring designs and ran their optimization loop again, squeezing out further decreases in visibility. When the team was confident in the design of a particular drone, they built it.

(Image credit: Michael Rubenstein/Northwestern University) The final Phantom Twist isn’t a compact block of hardware; it’s deliberately spread out in three dimensions. Components sit at different heights and angles, with empty space between them, so that when the drone spins, the parts don’t visually overlap into a solid silhouette.

That geometry matters because of the way our eyes process images.

Related stories

Drones could achieve 'infinite flight' after engineers create laser-based wireless power system that charges them from the ground

Students build new 'hybrid drone' — watch it fly in the air and then seamlessly dive underwater

MIT builds swarms of tiny robotic insect drones that can fly 100 times longer than previous designs

"The human eye takes time to accumulate signals, roughly analogous to the exposure time of a camera," said computer vision expert and co-author of the study Emma Alexander . When something spins fast enough, distinct edges smear together, and we perceive a blur instead of a shape.

The researchers' initial uses for the stealthy drones include monitoring nesting birds without startling them, surveying wetlands without scattering flocks of waterbirds, and inspecting aging infrastructure without altering human behavior, they said.

For now, Phantom Twist isn’t a perfect "ghost." The spinning propeller still generates a significant amount of noise and the spider‑web of thin wires and support rods remains partially visible. Rubenstein and his colleagues said in the study they’re already thinking about next-generation iterations that swap in more transparent materials and quieter propulsion systems.

Full text

As more Americans experiment with synthetic peptides despite warnings about their unproven benefits and potential risks, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration will meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss changes that could make peptides more accessible.

At issue is whether to allow compounding pharmacies to manufacture seven peptides that are currently designated as unsafe for them to make. The panel discussion is expected to be unusual in more ways than one.

First, many of the newly appointed members on the panel hold what critics ( including FDA staff ) say are conflicts of interest. The panel roster includes several physicians who prescribe peptides to patients as well as pharmacist and Tennessee state Sen. Bobby Harshbarger, whose mother, U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) has advocated for looser peptide regulations . Many of these panelists were selected by the Health and Human Services Department, FDA officials previously told STAT.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…