Cultivating Leadership: Female Leaders in the Royal Bahamas Defense Force

Lessons learned from the impact of COVID-19 have significant implications on crisis management for those serving in the military. Leadership must bear the full brunt of directing subordinates while addressing the crisis at hand. So how do we learn from those volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) situations that arise with no notice? Even more so, those in leadership positions in military branches are instrumental as first responders coming to the national aid of their people. Females continue to enter nontraditional occupational roles, including joining the ranks of leadership in military organizations. This is true in the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) as an increasing number of women have not only joined the ranks of this navy defense force but have taken on leadership roles and progressed up the ranks (McPhee, 2021). Integration with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides an additional context for understanding the needs of our female leaders. This research reflects the insights provided by present RBDF female leaders at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The structure of this inquiry provides a qualitative methodology, gleaned from twenty (20) female leaders through interviews of fourteen respondents and a focus group of six participants. The major research question demonstrates how the impact of COVID-19 for RBDF female leaders affected their leadership on the job and their overall work-life balance. Furthermore, the personal implications of leadership and decision making while achieving a military career during a global pandemic and maintaining family responsibilities illuminates a resilience that this research seeks to uncover. Participants represent female officers and enlisted rates. Lessons from the recent epidemic assist leaders in preparation for the next disaster to be ready for the ensuing challenges. The first responders and leaders who guided a small island nation toward survival with a future for its citizens provide valuable information resulting from this research. Cultivating leadership for a thriving future helps us become better prepared for the next unexpected crises that descends quickly and with no advanced notice. This research provides great insight from those who met these challenges as first responder female military leaders directing a small island nation towards survival and a future for its citizenry

CRYPTOCHROMES promote daily protein homeostasis.

The daily organisation of most mammalian cellular functions is attributed to circadian regulation of clock-controlled protein expression, driven by daily cycles of CRYPTOCHROME-dependent transcriptional feedback repression. To test this, we used quantitative mass spectrometry to compare wild-type and CRY-deficient fibroblasts under constant conditions. In CRY-deficient cells, we found that temporal variation in protein, phosphopeptide, and K+ abundance was at least as great as wild-type controls. Most strikingly, the extent of temporal variation within either genotype was much smaller than overall differences in proteome composition between WT and CRY-deficient cells. This proteome imbalance in CRY-deficient cells and tissues was associated with increased susceptibility to proteotoxic stress, which impairs circadian robustness, and may contribute to the wide-ranging phenotypes of CRY-deficient mice. Rather than generating large-scale daily variation in proteome composition, we suggest it is plausible that the various transcriptional and post-translational functions of CRY proteins ultimately act to maintain protein and osmotic homeostasis against daily perturbation

A qualitative evidence synthesis of employees' views of workplace smoking reduction or cessation interventions

Background The need to reduce smoking rates is a recognised public health policy issue in many countries. The workplace offers a potential context for offering smokers’ programmes and interventions to assist smoking cessation or reduction. A qualitative evidence synthesis of employees’ views about such programmes might explain why some interventions appear effective and others not, and can be used to develop evidence-based interventions for this population and setting. Methods A qualitative evidence synthesis of primary research exploring employees’ views about workplace interventions to encourage smoking cessation, including both voluntary programmes and passive interventions, such as restrictions or bans. The method used was theory-based “best fit” framework synthesis. Results Five relevant theories on workplace smoking cessation were identified and used as the basis for an a priori framework. A comprehensive literature search, including interrogation of eight databases, retrieved 747 unique citations for the review. Fifteen primary research studies of qualitative evidence were found to satisfy the inclusion criteria. The synthesis produced an evidence-based conceptual model explaining employees’ experiences of, and preferences regarding, workplace smoking interventions. Conclusion The synthesis suggests that workplace interventions should employ a range of different elements if they are to prove effective in reducing smoking among employees. This is because an employee who feels ready and able to change their behaviour has different needs and preferences from an employee who is not at that stage. Only a multi-faceted intervention can satisfy the requirements of all employees

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements