An Exploratory Study Investigating Leader and Follower Characteristics at U.S. Healthcare Organizations

Leadership has been studied by a myriad of scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries. One recent stream of research focuses on the followers of leaders. Today, followership is recognized as a construct that has value, and there is a broad call for additional research in this area (Gardner et al., 2005; Howell and Shamir, 2005.) In this study, the authors propose hypotheses that focus on followers and on their adoption of characteristics that are leader-like. The central thesis in this study is that followers have the ability to share roles with leaders. To test that thesis, a model is presented of specific leader and follower behaviors that (a) are thought to be related and overlapping, and (b) are relevant to role-sharing. Borrowing from prior work in which role sharing has been discussed, this study presents hypotheses and findings from analysis of field survey data collected from employees in healthcare organizations

Mending the Gaps: An Exercise in Identifying and Understanding Diverse and Multicultural Team Faultlines

The Faultlines Exercise, an experiential activity, introduces students to concepts of diversity attributes (surface and deep levels), social identity, and team faultlines. Through individual reflection and team discussion, students apply these concepts to their own diverse multicultural class teams with the goals of (a) preventing negative outcomes that may develop from faultlines and (b) improving team performance. Plenary class discussions reinforce key learning points that can be applied to teamwork throughout the course. Students in both face-to-face and online classes report that the exercise helps improve team performance and helps to identify and resolve problems. Instructions for facilitating classroom discussion and student handouts are provided, as are suggestions for adapting the exercise to other constructs

Most Admired Leader/Most Admired Follower

In introducing concepts of leadership and followership to students, this experiential exercise highlights qualities associated with the leader and follower roles. Various learning objectives guide the development of the exercise. They focus on identification of behavioral qualities possessed by both leaders and followers and on the importance of the leader-follower relationship to the organization’s achievement of goals. Theoretical underpinnings are stressed throughout. In the exercise, students individually develop a list of characteristics associated with their own most admired leader or follower and then share their lists in small groups. In plenary discussion, groups share all characteristics identified, and the instructor leads discussion to achieve stated learning objectives. Exercise handouts, instructions for facilitating classroom discussion, and a summary of theories that may be used as a postexercise student handout are provided

Conservative Therapy of Patient with Dyspareunia in a Post-menopausal State with Co-morbidities Including Previous Breast Cancer and Valve Replacement: A Case Report

Dyspareunia is defined as persistent pain in the vaginal area before, during, or after sexual intercourse.1,2 The etiology is uncertain in the medical literature, but evidence proposes that pain and dysfunction of pelvic floor muscles (PFM) can contribute to dyspareunia and other forms of chronic pelvic pain.1,2 The information contained in this case report is clinically relevant because it presents evidence that dyspareunia can be treated safely with physical therapy techniques on a patient with a complex medical history.https://soar.usa.edu/casmfall2018/1003/thumbnail.jp

The challenge of embedding an ecosystems approach:patterns of knowledge utilisation in public policy appraisal

The ‘ecosystem services approach’ (ESA) to policy making has refocused attention on how knowledge is embedded in policy. Appraisal has long been identified as an important venue for embedding, but suffers from well-known difficulties. This paper examines the extent to which an ESA appears in UK policy appraisal documents, and how far implementing an ESA via appraisal may encounter the same difficulties. A clear understanding of this is vital for interrogating claims that improving knowledge necessarily leads to more sustainable ecosystem management. The paper reports on the content of seventy-five national-level policy appraisals undertaken in the United Kingdom between 2008 and 2012. Only some elements of an ESA appear, with even the environment ministry failing to systematically pick up the concept, which is indeed subject to many of the familiar barriers to embedding environmental knowledge in appraisals. Policy initiatives attempting to institutionalise ecosystem values need to be conversant with these barriers

Iris: an Extensible Application for Building and Analyzing Spectral Energy Distributions

Iris is an extensible application that provides astronomers with a user-friendly interface capable of ingesting broad-band data from many different sources in order to build, explore, and model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris takes advantage of the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, but hides the technicalities of such standards by implementing different layers of abstraction on top of them. Such intermediate layers provide hooks that users and developers can exploit in order to extend the capabilities provided by Iris. For instance, custom Python models can be combined in arbitrary ways with the Iris built-in models or with other custom functions. As such, Iris offers a platform for the development and integration of SED data, services, and applications, either from the user's system or from the web. In this paper we describe the built-in features provided by Iris for building and analyzing SEDs. We also explore in some detail the Iris framework and software development kit, showing how astronomers and software developers can plug their code into an integrated SED analysis environment.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin

Thermal Analysis of a Special Grout Mixture for In-Situ Decommissioning -11389

ABSTRACT The 105-R Reactor at Savannah River Site (SRS) has been obsolete since 1964. The Department of Energy has set a goal to reduce its footprint at SRS; therefore identifying the 105-R Reactor for decommissioning was made in collaboration with stakeholders. The in-situ decommissioning (ISD) approach was used as the end state for the safe and cost effective disposition of a structurally sound, robust nuclear facility. This decommissioning approach involves filling all below grade areas with flowable, self leveling cementitious materials (grout) to entomb this massive nuclear building. Fill material generates heat (heat of hydration) during the curing process, which may influence material compatibility/stability with the existing structure. Temperature differences can affect the curing properties of the grout as well as cause the material to expand and contract as it heats and cools, which may in turn cause thermal cracking. An experimental setup was performed at the Applied Research Center (ARC) at Florida International University (FIU) in order to monitor the temperature along the radial and axial direction of the grout mixture with respect to time. The experiment focused on determining the presence of localized hot spots and determining the extent of thermal uniformity. The experiment also verified that the compressive strength of the grout was not under the minimum site requirement of 345 kPa (50 psi). Obtaining temperature changes as the grout cured had the additional benefit of providing understanding of the material behavior along the radial direction, which provides an indication of material quality; this is an area which has not been studied thoroughly and, therefore, is of interest to SRNL

Likert Items: Should(n’t) We Really Care?

One of the controversial methodological topics in the social and behavioral sciences is the (ab)use of Likert Scale items, Likert-type items and ranked ordered response categories. The debate is whether parametric tests can be legitimately conducted on technically ordinal response categories that are represented with numbers. Participants answered survey questions on moral disengagement, where we changed the intervals of seven response categories and tested whether assigning numbers made any difference in two separate studies. The results showed that participants’ ratings were not significantly different with or without numbers. Participants tend to covertly superimpose numbers where none were provided. Also, there were no significant interactions between assignment of numbers and ‘intervalness’. However, ratings were significantly different between two key interval groups. Knowing the assumptions of respondents to these Likert items even without numbers could inform researchers especially if parametric tests are to be conducted

Minactivin expression in human monocyte and macrophage populations

Adherent monolayer cultures of human blood monocytes, peritoneal macrophages, bone marrow macrophages, and colonic mucosa macrophages were examined for their ability to produce and secrete minactivin, a specific inactivator of urokinase-type plasminogen activator. All except colonic mucosa macrophages produced and secreted appreciable amounts of minactivin, but only blood monocytes were stimulated by muramyl dipeptide (adjuvant peptide) to increase production. The minactivin from each of these populations could be shown to preferentially inhibit urokinase-type plasminogen activator and not trypsin, plasmin, or 'tissue'-type plasminogen activator (HPA66). A plasminogen-activating enzyme present in monocyte cultures appeared unaffected by the presence of minactivin and could be shown to be regulated independently by dexamethasone