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    Even without a brain, metal-eating robots can search for food

    When it comes to powering mobile robots, batteries present a problematic paradox: the more energy they contain, the more they weigh, and thus the more energy the robot needs to move. Energy harvesters, like solar panels, might work for some applications, but they don’t deliver power quickly or consistently enough for sustained travel.
    James Pikul, assistant professor in Penn Engineering’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, is developing robot-powering technology that has the best of both worlds. His environmentally controlled voltage source, or ECVS, works like a battery, in that the energy is produced by repeatedly breaking and forming chemical bonds, but it escapes the weight paradox by finding those chemical bonds in the robot’s environment, like a harvester. While in contact with a metal surface, an ECVS unit catalyzes an oxidation reaction with the surrounding air, powering the robot with the freed electrons.
    Pikul’s approach was inspired by how animals power themselves through foraging for chemical bonds in the form of food. And like a simple organism, these ECVS-powered robots are now capable of searching for their own food sources despite lacking a “brain.”
    In a new study published as an Editor’s Choice article in Advanced Intelligent Systems, Pikul, along with lab members Min Wang and Yue Gao, demonstrate a wheeled robot that can navigate its environment without a computer. By having the left and right wheels of the robot powered by different ECVS units, they show a rudimentary form of navigation and foraging, where the robot will automatically steer toward metallic surfaces it can “eat.”
    Their study also outlines more complicated behavior that can be achieved without a central processor. With different spatial and sequential arrangements of ECVS units, a robot can perform a variety of logical operations based on the presence or absence of its food source.
    “Bacteria are able to autonomously navigate toward nutrients through a process called chemotaxis, where they sense and respond to changes in chemical concentrations,” Pikul says. “Small robots have similar constraints to microorganisms, since they can’t carry big batteries or complicated computers, so we wanted to explore how our ECVS technology could replicate that kind of behavior.”
    In the researchers’ experiments, they placed their robot on aluminum surfaces capable of powering its ECVS units. By adding “hazards” that would prevent the robot from making contact with the metal, they showed how ECVS units could both get the robot moving and navigate it toward more energy-rich sources. More

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    Heat conduction record with tantalum nitride

    A thermos bottle has the task of preserving the temperature — but sometimes you want to achieve the opposite: Computer chips generate heat that must be dissipated as quickly as possible so that the chip is not destroyed. This requires special materials with particularly good heat conduction properties.
    In collaboration with groups from China and the United States, a research team from TU Wien therefore set out to find the optimal heat conductor. They finally found what they were looking for in a very specific form of tantalum nitride — no other known metallic material has a higher thermal conductivity. In order to be able to identify this record-breaking material, they first had to analyse which processes play a role in heat conduction in such materials at the atomic level. The results have now been published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
    Electrons and lattice vibrations
    “Basically, there are two mechanisms by which heat propagates in a material,” explains Prof. Georg Madsen from the Institute of Materials Chemistry at TU Wien. “Firstly, through the electrons that travel through the material, taking energy with them. This is the main mechanism in good electrical conductors. And secondly through the phonons, which are collective lattice vibrations in the material.” The atoms move, causing other atoms to wobble. At higher temperatures, heat conduction through propagation of these vibrations is usually the decisive effect.
    But neither the electrons nor the lattice vibrations can propagate completely unhindered through the material. There are various processes that slow down this propagation of thermal energy. Electrons and lattice vibrations can interact with each other, they can scatter, they can be stopped by irregularities in the material.
    In some cases, heat conduction can even be dramatically limited by the fact that different isotopes of an element are built into the material — i.e. similar atoms with different numbers of neutrons. In that case, the atoms do not have exactly the same mass, and this affects the collective vibrational behaviour of the atoms in the material. More

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    Scientists create next gen living robots

    Last year, a team of biologists and computer scientists from Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) created novel, tiny self-healing biological machines from frog cells called “Xenobots” that could move around, push a payload, and even exhibit collective behavior in the presence of a swarm of other Xenobots.
    Get ready for Xenobots 2.0.
    The same team has now created life forms that self-assemble a body from single cells, do not require muscle cells to move, and even demonstrate the capability of recordable memory. The new generation Xenobots also move faster, navigate different environments, and have longer lifespans than the first edition, and they still have the ability to work together in groups and heal themselves if damaged. The results of the new research were published today in Science Robotics.
    Compared to Xenobots 1.0, in which the millimeter-sized automatons were constructed in a “top down” approach by manual placement of tissue and surgical shaping of frog skin and cardiac cells to produce motion, the next version of Xenobots takes a “bottom up” approach. The biologists at Tufts took stem cells from embryos of the African frog Xenopus laevis (hence the name “Xenobots”) and allowed them to self-assemble and grow into spheroids, where some of the cells after a few days differentiated to produce cilia — tiny hair-like projections that move back and forth or rotate in a specific way. Instead of using manually sculpted cardiac cells whose natural rhythmic contractions allowed the original Xenobots to scuttle around, cilia give the new spheroidal bots “legs” to move them rapidly across a surface. In a frog, or human for that matter, cilia would normally be found on mucous surfaces, like in the lungs, to help push out pathogens and other foreign material. On the Xenobots, they are repurposed to provide rapid locomotion.
    “We are witnessing the remarkable plasticity of cellular collectives, which build a rudimentary new ‘body’ that is quite distinct from their default — in this case, a frog — despite having a completely normal genome,” said Michael Levin, Distinguished Professor of Biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, and corresponding author of the study. “In a frog embryo, cells cooperate to create a tadpole. Here, removed from that context, we see that cells can re-purpose their genetically encoded hardware, like cilia, for new functions such as locomotion. It is amazing that cells can spontaneously take on new roles and create new body plans and behaviors without long periods of evolutionary selection for those features.”
    “In a way, the Xenobots are constructed much like a traditional robot. Only we use cells and tissues rather than artificial components to build the shape and create predictable behavior.” said senior scientist Doug Blackiston, who co-first authored the study with research technician Emma Lederer. “On the biology end, this approach is helping us understand how cells communicate as they interact with one another during development, and how we might better control those interactions.”
    While the Tufts scientists created the physical organisms, scientists at UVM were busy running computer simulations that modeled different shapes of the Xenobots to see if they might exhibit different behaviors, both individually and in groups. Using the Deep Green supercomputer cluster at UVM’s Vermont Advanced Computing Core, the team, led by computer scientists and robotics experts Josh Bongard and under hundreds of thousands of random environmental conditions using an evolutionary algorithm. These simulations were used to identify Xenobots most able to work together in swarms to gather large piles of debris in a field of particles. More

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    Study shows promise of quantum computing using factory-made silicon chips

    The qubit is the building block of quantum computing, analogous to the bit in classical computers. To perform error-free calculations, quantum computers of the future are likely to need at least millions of qubits. The latest study, published in the journal PRX Quantum, suggests that these computers could be made with industrial-grade silicon chips using existing manufacturing processes, instead of adopting new manufacturing processes or even newly discovered particles.
    For the study, researchers were able to isolate and measure the quantum state of a single electron (the qubit) in a silicon transistor manufactured using a ‘CMOS’ technology similar to that used to make chips in computer processors.
    Furthermore, the spin of the electron was found to remain stable for a period of up to nine seconds. The next step is to use a similar manufacturing technology to show how an array of qubits can interact to perform quantum logic operations.
    Professor John Morton (London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL), co-founder of Quantum Motion, said: “We’re hacking the process of creating qubits, so the same kind of technology that makes the chip in a smartphone can be used to build quantum computers.
    “It has taken 70 years for transistor development to reach where we are today in computing and we can’t spend another 70 years trying to invent new manufacturing processes to build quantum computers. We need millions of qubits and an ultra-scalable architecture for building them, our discovery gives us a blueprint to shortcut our way to industrial scale quantum chip production.”
    The experiments were performed by PhD student Virginia Ciriano Tejel (London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL) and colleagues working in a low-temperature laboratory. During operation, the chips are kept in a refrigerated state, cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (?273 degrees Celsius).
    Ms Ciriano Tejel said: “Every physics student learns in textbooks that electrons behave like tiny magnets with weird quantum properties, but nothing prepares you for the feeling of wonder in the lab, being able to watch this ‘spin’ of a single electron with your own eyes, sometimes pointing up, sometimes down. It’s thrilling to be a scientist trying to understand the world and at the same time be part of the development of quantum computers.”
    A quantum computer harnesses laws of physics that are normally seen only at the atomic and subatomic level (for instance, that particles can be in two places simultaneously). Quantum computers could be more powerful than today’s super computers and capable of performing complex calculations that are otherwise practically impossible.
    While the applications of quantum computing differ from traditional computers, they will enable us to be more accurate and faster in hugely challenging areas such as drug development and tackling climate change, as well as more everyday problems that have huge numbers of variables — just as in nature — such as transport and logistics.
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    Physicists’ devotion to symmetry has led them astray before

    Second of two parts

    Physicists have a lot in common with Ponce de León and U2’s Bono. After decades of searching, they aren’t getting any younger. And they still haven’t found what they’re looking for.

    In this case, the object of the physicists’ quest is SUSY. SUSY is not a real person or even a fountain relevant to aging in any way. It’s a mathematical framework based on principles of symmetry that could help physicists better explain the mysteries of the universe. Many experts believe that particles predicted by SUSY are the weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, that supposedly make up the invisible “dark matter” lurking throughout the cosmos.

    So far, though, SUSY has been something of a disappointment. Despite multiple heroic searches, SUSY has remained concealed from view. Maybe it is a mathematical mirage.

    If SUSY does turn out to be a myth, it won’t be the first time that symmetry has led science on a wild WIMP chase. Reasoning from the symmetry of circular motion originally suggested the existence of a new form of matter out in space more than two millennia ago. Devotion to that symmetry blinded science to the true nature of the solar system and planetary motion for the next 19 centuries.

    You can blame Plato and Aristotle. In their day, ordinary matter supposedly consisted of four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Aristotle built an elaborate theory of motion based on those elements. He insisted that they naturally moved in straight lines; earth and water moving straight down (toward the center of the world), air and fire moving straight up. In the heavens, though, Aristotle noticed that motion appeared to be circular, as the stars rotated around the nighttime sky. “Our eyes tell us that the heavens revolve in a circle,” he wrote in On the Heavens. Since the known four elements all moved in a straight line, Aristotle deduced that the heavens must consist of a fifth element, called aether — absent on Earth but predominant in space.

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    Plato, on theoretical rather than observational grounds, had already insisted that circularity’s symmetry signified perfection, and therefore circular motion should be required in the heavens. And so for centuries, the assumption that celestial motion must be circular held a stranglehold on natural philosophers attempting to understand of the universe. As late as the 16th century, Copernicus was willing to depose Aristotle’s Earth from the middle of everything but still believed that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun with a combination of circular motions. Another half century passed before Kepler established that planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular.

    Aristotle’s belief in an exotic form of matter in space is not so different from the picture scientists paint of the heavens today, albeit in a rather more rigorous and sophisticated theoretical way. Dark matter predominates in space, astronomers believe; it is inferred to exist from gravitational effects altering the motions of stars and galaxies. And physicists have determined that the dark matter cannot (for various noncircular reasons) be made of the same ordinary matter found on Earth.

    SUSY particles have long been one of the most popular proposals for the identity of this cosmic dark matter, based on more complicated notions of symmetry than those available to Plato and Aristotle. And since the onset of the 20th century, symmetry math has generated an astounding string of scientific successes. From Einstein’s relativity to the theory of elementary particles and forces, symmetry considerations now form the core of science’s understanding of nature.  

    These mathematical forms of symmetry are more elaborate examples of symmetry as commonly understood: a change that leaves things looking like they did before. A perfectly symmetric face looks the same when a mirror swaps left with right. A perfect sphere’s appearance is not altered when you rotate it to see the other side. Rotate a snowflake by any multiple of 60 degrees and you see the same snowflake.

    In a similar way, more sophisticated mathematical frameworks, known as symmetry groups, describe aspects of the physical world, such as time and space or the families of subatomic particles that make up matter or transmit forces. Symmetries in the equations of such math can even predict previously unknown phenomena. Symmetry in the equations describing subatomic particles, for instance, revealed that for each particle nature allowed an antimatter particle, with opposite electric charge.

    In fact, all the known ordinary matter and force particles fit neatly into the mathematical patterns described by symmetry groups. But none of those particles can explain the dark matter.

    SUSY particles as a dark matter possibility emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when theorists proposed an even more advanced symmetry system. That math, called supersymmetry (hence SUSY), suggested the existence of a “super” partner particle for each known particle: a force-particle partner for every matter particle, and a matter-particle partner for every force particle. It was an elegant concept mathematically, and it solved (or at least ameliorated) some other vexing theoretical problems. Plus, of the super partner particles it predicted, the lightest one (whichever one that was) seemed likely to be a perfect dark matter WIMP.

    Alas, efforts to detect WIMPs (which should be hitting the Earth all the time) have almost all failed to find any. One experiment that did claim a WIMP detection seems to be on shaky ground — a new experiment, using the same method and materials, reports no such WIMP evidence. And attempts to produce SUSY particles in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, have also come up empty.

    Some physicists have therefore given up on SUSY. And perhaps supersymmetry has been as misleading as the Greek infatuation with circular motion. But the truth is that SUSY is not a theory that can be slain by a single experiment. It is a more nebulous mathematical notion, a framework within which many specific theories can be constructed.   

    “You can’t really kill SUSY because it’s not a thing,” physicist Patrick Stengel of the International Higher School of Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, said at a conference in Washington, D.C., in 2019. “It’s not an idea that you can kill. It’s basically just a framework for a bunch of ideas.”

    At the same conference, University of Texas at Austin physicist Katherine Freese pointed out that there was never any guarantee that the Large Hadron Collider would discover SUSY. “Even before the LHC got built, there were a lot of people who said, well, it might not go to a high enough energy,” she said.

    So SUSY may yet turn out to be an example of symmetry that leads physics to success. But just in case, physicists have pursued other dark matter possibilities. One old suggestion that has recently received renewed interest is a lightweight hypothetical particle called an axion (SN: 3/24/20).

    Of course, if axions do exist, symmetry fans could still rejoice — the motivation for proposing the axion to begin with was resolving an issue with yet another form of symmetry. More

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    Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics, according to new study of 8,500 parents

    Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
    “Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for conformance-oriented programs,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Many parents are surprised to learn that their political identity can affect the educational choices they make for their children.”
    Supplemental education programs include private tutoring, test preparation support and educational books and materials as well as online educational support services. The global market for private tutoring services is forecasted to reach $260.7 billion by 2024, and the U.S. market for tutoring is reported to be more than $8.9 billion a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 100,000 businesses in the private education services industry. Supplemental education program brands are among the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur magazine’s 2020 rankings, and they include popular providers such as Kumon (ranked No. 12), Mathnasium (No. 29) and Huntington Learning Center (No. 39).
    For over five decades, education psychologists have utilized two pedagogical orientations — conformance orientation and independence orientation. A conformance orientation is more standardized and guided, emphasizing lecture-based content delivery, knowledge and memorization, frequent use of homework assignments, standardized examinations with relative evaluation and classroom attendance discipline and rules. In contrast, an independence orientation features discussion-based seminars and student-led presentations, an emphasis on ideas rather than facts, use of multimodal interaction instead of books, and highly variable and unstructured class routines. The two approaches do not differ in terms of topics covered in the curriculum or the specific qualities to be imparted to students.
    The research team asked parents about their preferences for different programs framed as conformance- or independence-oriented. In five studies of more than 8,500 parents, conservative parents preferred education programs that were framed as conformance-oriented, while liberal parents preferred independence-oriented education programs. This differential preference emerged for different measures of parents’ political identity: their party affiliation, self-reported political leaning and whether they watch Fox or CNN/MSNBC for news.
    “By understanding the underlying motivations behind parents’ preferences, educational programs’ appeal to parents can be substantially enhanced,” Mittal said. “Supplemental tutoring will be a major expenditure and investment for parents grappling with their child’s academic performance in the post-pandemic era. Informal conversations show parents gearing up to supplement school-based education with tutoring. Despite this, very little research exists about the factors that affect parents’ preference for and utilization of supplemental education.”
    Mittal cautioned that these results do not speak to ultimate student performance. “This study only speaks to parents’ preferences but does not study ultimate student achievement,” he said.
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    Dazzling underwater photos capture new views and scientific detail of fish larvae

    The open ocean is a veritable soup of tiny critters, including newborn fishes. It’s hard to learn about them, though, because they are mere millimeters long and semitransparent. When netted from research vessels, their delicate body parts may get mashed or removed. Now, a partnership between scientists and scuba divers is giving researchers fresh perspectives on the secrets of larval fishes.

    Underwater photos taken at night — when larval fishes migrate to within 200 meters of the ocean surface — reveal colors, body structures and behaviors that could never be seen in preserved specimens. Examining those same fishes back in the lab lets ichthyologists match the photographed larval fishes to known species, researchers report March 30 in Ichthyology & Herpetology.

    Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hatched a collaboration in 2016 with blackwater divers — who enter the ocean in the dark of night — to photograph larval fishes and collect them as specimens. With lights in hand, divers Jeff Milisen and Sarah Mayte snapped up-close photos of nearly 80 larval fishes, then gingerly captured and shipped them to scientists to be studied alongside their mugshots.

    “Fish larvae that looked utterly drab as specimens have turned out to have brilliantly colored markings and fantastic structures,” says Ai Nonaka, a larval fish expert at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

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    Fragile appendages

    Specialists like Nonaka sort out larval fish identities by looking at body shapes and minuscule features through microscopes and by analyzing DNA of larval tissue. Unlike their swimming parents, fish larvae drift on currents, and their strange body parts — adaptations for a drifting lifestyle — make larvae look nothing like adults. 

    “Larval fishes are extremely difficult to identify,” says Dave Johnson, an ichthyologist also at the Smithsonian. Scientists have mistakenly given larval fishes new scientific names, not recognizing them as early life stages of known species.

    Because larval fishes are soft and fragile, they don’t travel well. Larvae lose fins and other delicate structures that evoke their behavior. The scalloped ribbonfish (Zu cristatus) larva, for example, has spaghetti-like ornamental fins sprinkled with white spots that get broken off on specimens. The way these ornamental structures appear to flow out like tentacles in the images of wild larvae suggests the larvae could be jellyfish mimics, say the study authors.

    Scalloped ribbonfish (Zu cristatus) larva in the oceanJ. Milisen

    Scalloped ribbonfish (Z. cristatus) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    The trailing guts of a barbeled dragonfish (Aristostomias sp.) larva get mashed or broken off altogether, but the undersea photo reveals it coiled up into a tight corkscrew. Nonaka and Johnson confess that scientists don’t yet understand the function of the trailing guts seen in some larval fishes. One theory is that exposed innards might somehow increase digestion efficiency, while another suggests they could confuse predators.

    Barbeled dragonfish (Aristostomias sp.) larva in the oceanJ. Milisen

    Barbeled dragonfish (Aristostomias sp.) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    Hidden colors

    Ethanol preservation of specimens repels bacteria and fungi, but leaches out colors. The three-spot righteye flounder (Samariscus triocellatus) larva, bone white as a specimen, is bright blue. Its dorsal and anal fins are fringed with white, and rows of yellow spots dot the base of the fin rays. While their function has yet to be studied, it’s possible that these borders create a flickering visual effect to help the fish escape from predators, suggests Geoff Moser, a retired NOAA fisheries biologist not involved with the study. Called “flicker fusion,” it’s been examined in other animals such as striped snakes as a form of camouflage on the go.

    Three-spot righteye flounder (Samariscus triocellatus) larva in the oceanJ. Milisen

    Three-spot righteye flounder (S. triocellatus) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    The deep-sea tripodfish (Bathymicrops sp.) is plain and pale when prepared as a specimen and uniform brown as an adult fish — not exactly a looker. But the larva appears to have donned a clown costume with large white and orange polka dots flecked on its otherwise blue-hued body. In an ethanol specimen, its pectoral fins look soft and ghostly, whereas the living larva sports flamboyant, spiky and spotted fins. The function of the coloration is unknown. says Nonaka, but it could also be a flicker fusion trick.

    Deep-sea tripodfish (Bathymicrops sp.) larva in the oceanJ. Milisen

    Deep-sea tripodfish (Bathymicrops sp.) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    Fishy behavior

    In larval specimens, scientists can observe some structures as evidence of behaviors. But undersea observations of wild larval fishes can show what they’re really up to when they are alive. The larva of the barred conger (Ariosoma fasciatum) is super flat, quite unlike the cylindrical adult. Yet a photo shows that it swims like an adult barred conger, by undulating its long body laterally. So, while it’s more svelte as a larva, it’s got some of the adult movements down.

    Barred conger (Ariosoma fasciatum) larva in the oceanJ. Milisen

    Barred conger (A. fasciatum) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    Undersea observations can also reveal associations larvae have with other marine animals, including other tiny critters that also ride the currents. For example, a petite Pacific pomfret (Brama japonica) larva was caught on camera riding on a jellyfish. That’s a discovery that the study authors were unwilling to even speculate about. Although larval fishes have been seen taking shelter in the tentacles of jellies, hitching a ride on top of a jellyfish seems like an odd twist on that behavior.

    A pacific pomfret (Brama japonica) larva (pictured from three angles) in the ocean, riding a jellyfishJ. Milisen (photos); E. Otwell/Science News (collage)

    Pacific pomfret (Brama japonica) larva specimenA. Nonaka/Smithsonian NMNH

    Each larval fish that gets identified by scientists sets the stage for conservation. By knowing where larval fishes of particular species live, researchers can better advise on how to manage the ocean ecosystems the fishes depend on for survival.

    Conservation planning also requires knowledge of behavior (SN: 12/30/10). So photographing larval fishes and making their specimens available for identification means researchers get a handle on fishes’ behavioral adaptations for survival in the wild.

    “I’ve been working with fish larvae for over 40 years,” says Moser. “The chance to see these larvae in their environment was a wonderful advance in our scientific endeavors.” More

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    Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

    As social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and others continue to grow in popularity, adolescents are spending more of their time online navigating a complex virtual world.
    New research suggests that these increased hours spent online may be associated with cyberbullying behaviors. According to a study by the University of Georgia, higher social media addiction scores, more hours spent online, and identifying as male significantly predicted cyberbullying perpetration in adolescents.
    “There are some people who engage in cyberbullying online because of the anonymity and the fact that there’s no retaliation,” said Amanda Giordano, principal investigator of the study and associate professor in the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education. “You have these adolescents who are still in the midst of cognitive development, but we’re giving them technology that has a worldwide audience and then expecting them to make good choices.”
    Cyberbullying can take on many forms, including personal attacks, harassment or discriminatory behavior, spreading defamatory information, misrepresenting oneself online, spreading private information, social exclusion and cyberstalking.
    The study surveyed adolescents ranging in age from 13-19 years old. Of the 428 people surveyed, 214 (50%) identified as female, 210 (49.1%) as male, and four (0.9%) as other.
    Exploring social media addiction
    When adolescents are online, they adapt to a different set of social norms than when they’re interacting with their peers in person. Oftentimes, they are more aggressive or critical on social media because of the anonymity they have online and their ability to avoid retaliation. Additionally, cyberbullies may feel less remorse or empathy when engaging in these behaviors because they can’t see the direct impact of their actions. More