School Personnel and Leadership Collaboration Model for Ideal Work Contexts

This article describes the school personnel and leadership collaboration (SPLC) model, a shared-responsibility framework for faculty, staff, and administrators. Prior research consistently demonstrates the need for (a) administrative support for teachers and other school personnel and (b) collegial support among staff. The SPLC model represents an amalgamation of this research and, moreover, integrates personnel support for leadership. In the managerial sciences, leader–member exchange (LMX) is a well-known relationship-based leadership approach that focuses on a dyadic or two-way relationship between supervisors and their employees. Though managers are responsible for overseeing operations, personnel contribute ideas, participate in decision-making, and follow through with their responsibilities. LMX is associated with positive work experiences and job performance outcomes. In contrast, schools are often run with a top–down leadership approach that solicits little to no input from staff, leading to low morale, high attrition rates, and negative school climate. Thus, the SPLC model was inspired by LMX and emphasizes practices, such as shared decision-making, staff autonomy, and shared responsibilities. Detailed examples of ways schools may apply the SPLC model to their practices are included

Segmentation of the left ventricle in 4d-dSPECT data using free form deformation of super quadrics

In dynamic SPECT (dSPECT) images, function of a particular organ may be analyzed by measuring the temporal change of the spatial distribution of a radioactive tracer. The organ-specific and location-specific time-activity curves (TAC) of the different heart regions (regions with normal blood circulation and with disturbed blood circulation) are helpful for the diagnosis of heart diseases. A problem of the derivation of the TACs is that the dSPECT images have a poor spatial and temporal resolution and the data is distorted because of noise effects, partial volume effects and scatter artifacts. Segmentation according to some homogeneity principle will deliver regions of similar functional behavior but the segmented regions do not directly point to anatomy. For our goal of anatomy-specific segmentation, information about anatomy is provided a-priori and it must be fitted to the data. For initialization the user has to place a super ellipsoid in the data set. The parameters of this super ellipsoid are obtained from the computed mean shape of six manually segmented left ventricles in test data sets. A closer fit to the high gradients of the boundaries of the heart wall is achieved using the free form deformation method. For evaluation segmentation results are compared with a manual segmentation. In all test images we could ascertain a good correspondence between the manual and automatic segmentation

Interpreting Wage Gaps of Disabled Men: The Roles of Productivity and of Discrimination

Using the UK Labour Force Survey, we study wage gaps for disabled men after the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act. We estimate wage gaps at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution and decompose them into a part explained by differences in workers' and job characteristics, a part that can be ascribed to health-related reduced productivity, and a residual part. The large original wage gaps reduce substantially when we control for differences in education and occupation, although significant residuals remain. However, when we isolate productivity differences between disabled and nondisabled workers, the residual wage gap becomes insignificant in most cases

Prevalence, predictors, and outcomes of cardiorenal syndrome in children with dilated cardiomyopathy: a report from the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry

BACKGROUND: The association of cardiorenal syndrome (CRS) with mortality in children with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is unknown. METHODS: With a modified Schwartz formula, we estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFR) for children ≥1 year old with DCM enrolled in the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry at the time of DCM diagnosis and annually thereafter, and defined CRS as an eGFR <90 mL/min/1.73 m(2). Children with and without CRS were compared on survival and serum creatinine concentrations (SCr). The association between eGFR and echocardiographic measures was assessed with linear mixed-effects regression models. RESULTS: Of 285 eligible children with DCM diagnosed at ≥1 year of age, 93 were evaluable. CRS was identified in 57 (61.3%). Mean (SD) eGFR was 62.0 (22.6) mL/min/1.73 m(2) for children with CRS and 108.0 (14.0) for those without (P<0.001); median SCr concentrations were 0.9 and 0.5 mg/dL, respectively (P<0.001). The mortality hazard ratio of children with CRS vs. no CRS was 2.4 (95% CI: 0.8-7.4). eGFR was positively correlated with measures of left ventricular function and negatively correlated with age. CONCLUSIONS: CRS in children newly diagnosed with DCM may be associated with higher 5-year mortality. Children with DCM, especially those with impaired left ventricular function, should be monitored for renal disease