The role and function of chairs of university boards and councils

This qualitative research explores the role and function of chairs of university boards of governors and councils - their governing and ultimate decision-making bodies. It utilises in-depth studies of a small number of English universities, using as primary sources the chairs and other corporate leadership figures. Through interviews, supported by secondary source material from the universities, it reveals the interior workings of decision-making in higher education corporate governance, and the key role of these chairs. The research shows chairs as significant leadership figures in their universities, independent of management, and with distinctive domains of their own, the boundaries of which are contestable, particularly at the interface with the management domain. Their authority is considerable, yet contingent, derived from multiple sources, and reified though leadership of the lay majority of the governing body. The chair's role is shown not to be determined by the university's mission, though chairs demonstrate a level of `super-commitment' to their university, its values and academic work. Chairs determine how much time they will spend in their university, and it is considerable, engaging with extended, often informal, networks of contacts as well as in formal duties. Drawn from senior figures in employment, they look to their working experience to guide their conduct as chairs. The chairs are proactive in undertaking their work, appointing vice-chancellors, engaging in the determination of institutional strategy and monitoring its implementation. The chair/vice-chancellor dyad is confirmed as a significant, mutually beneficial working relationship: chairs in this study provide support, mentorship and advice, but also require accountability, as the de facto `managers' of their vicechancellors. The research shows that chairs may draw considerable authority from this association, in terms of engagement in, and information about, the university and its core academic business. Governance/management domain boundaries in the case study institutions were not as clearly differentiated as is often assumed in the governance literature, but are shown to be blurred, ambiguous, shifting and evolving.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A new role under sortilin's belt in cancer.

The neurotensin receptor-3 also known as sortilin was the first member of the small family of vacuolar protein sorting 10 protein domain (Vps10p) discovered two decades ago in the human brain. The expression of sortilin is not confined to the nervous system but sortilin is ubiquitously expressed in many tissues. Sortilin has multiple roles in the cell as a receptor or a co-receptor, in protein transport of many interacting partners to the plasma membrane, to the endocytic pathway and to the lysosomes for protein degradation. Sortilin could be considered as the cells own shuttle system. In many human diseases including neurological diseases and cancer, sortilin expression has been shown to be deregulated. In addition, some studies have highlighted that the extracellular domain of sortilin is shedded into the culture media by an unknown mechanism. Sortilin can be released in exosomes and appears to control some mechanisms of exosome biogenesis. In lung cancer cells, sortilin can associate with two receptor tyrosine kinase receptors called the TES complex found in exosomes. Exosomes carrying the TES complex can convey a microenvironment control through the activation of ErbB signaling pathways and the release of angiogenic factors. Deregulation of sortilin function is now emerging to be implicated in four major human diseases- cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer

SNIFS: a wideband integral field spectrograph with microlens arrays

Supernova

Cephalopod genomics: a plan of strategies and organization

The Cephalopod Sequencing Consortium (CephSeq Consortium) was established at a NESCent Catalysis Group Meeting, "Paths to Cephalopod Genomics-Strategies, Choices, Organization," held in Durham, North Carolina, USA on May 24-27, 2012. Twenty-eight participants representing nine countries (Austria, Australia, China, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the USA) met to address the pressing need for genome sequencing of cephalopod mollusks. This group, drawn from cephalopod biologists, neuroscientists, developmental and evolutionary biologists, materials scientists, bioinformaticians and researchers active in sequencing, assembling and annotating genomes, agreed on a set of cephalopod species of particular importance for initial sequencing and developed strategies and an organization (CephSeq Consortium) to promote this sequencing. The conclusions and recommendations of this meeting are described in this white paper

Cephalopod genomics : a plan of strategies and organization

© The Author(s), 2012. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Standards in Genomic Sciences 7 (2012): 175-188, doi:10.4056/sigs.3136559.The Cephalopod Sequencing Consortium (CephSeq Consortium) was established at a NESCent Catalysis Group Meeting, “Paths to Cephalopod Genomics- Strategies, Choices, Organization,” held in Durham, North Carolina, USA on May 24-27, 2012. Twenty-eight participants representing nine countries (Austria, Australia, China, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the USA) met to address the pressing need for genome sequencing of cephalopod molluscs. This group, drawn from cephalopod biologists, neuroscientists, developmental and evolutionary biologists, materials scientists, bioinformaticians and researchers active in sequencing, assembling and annotating genomes, agreed on a set of cephalopod species of particular importance for initial sequencing and developed strategies and an organization (CephSeq Consortium) to promote this sequencing. The conclusions and recommendations of this meeting are described in this White Paper.The Catalysis Group Meeting was supported by the National Science Foundation through the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) under grant number NSF #EF-0905606