New Scientist Magazine reports that the US Department of Defense plans to develop a lie detector that can be used without the subject knowing they are being assessed. In a call for proposals on a DoD website, contractors are being given until 13 January to suggest ways to develop the Remote Personnel Assessment (RPA).

Usually we think of the importance of sharing 'positive' intelligence between organisational team members (for example Virtual Team Behavior - Curiosity and Learning). However recent UK research on foraging Pharaoh ants indicates that sharing 'negative' intelligence to avoid wasted effort may be just as important.

The theory of Biophilia, put forward by Edward Wilson, author of Journey to the Ants, suggests that human well-being and health is dependent on our relationships with the natural environment. New clinical research by Howard Frumkin of Emory University in Atlanta seems to back this up.

The 12th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising (ICE 2006) will be held at the Palazzo delle Stelline, Milan, Italy, 26-28 June 2006. This is a major forum for practitioners, researchers and tool vendors to demonstrate and share the results of their work in the broad domain of Concurrent Enterprising, which is a combination of Concurrent Engineering and the Virtual/ Extended Enterprise. The theme of this year's conference is "Innovative Products and Services through Collaborative Networks ". For more details on the conference.

Bees recognise human faces

The pattern recognition skills of bees are well-known, thought to have evolved to enable them to discriminate between different types of flowers. As social insects, they can also recognise and differentiate between their hivemates. Now a new study shows that these capabilities are so powerful that bees can recognize human faces better than some humans and with one-ten thousandth of the brain cells. The results may help lead to better face-recognition software. To read boingboing synopsis.

Ecolead is a major European applied research project on collaborative networked organisations (CNOs)

Ecolead (European Collaborative Networked Organisations Leadership Initiative) looks like it could be one of the most important strategic research projects in the virtual collaboration area in Europe and beyond over the next 4 years.

Without perceived fairness cooperation breaks down

Andrew Brown, writing in The Guardian, on Saturday October 29, 2005, Basic instincts - Humans are inclined to love their neighbours, so long as they play fair points out firstly that co-operative and altruistic behavior between humans must make sense or else evolution would have rendered it extinct:

James Thornton in “You Have Three Brains” for TheBiggestIdeas.com reports on research by Paul D Maclean on the ‘triune’ brain. Apparently Maclean’s research suggests that we each have, not one but, three brains nested within our skulls – a lizard brain, a dog brain, and a human brain. This research got me thinking – if teams are really living systems then they might have 3 brains too?

Last week I made a post seeking interest from organisational team leaders who would like to collaborate with me in a unique mini research project into the beliefs of high-performing teams. Thank you to those who have expressed an interest - I will be getting back to you shortly. I am now announcing that the closing date for me to be able to consider any further expressions of interest in this collaborative research project is next Friday (October 21).

The importance of team ‘early movers’

(or Why do I always have to take out the garbage?)