Being Native American in Business: Culture, Identity, and Authentic Leadership in Modern American Indian Enterprises

Tribally-owned American Indian enterprises provide a unique cross-cultural setting for emerging Native American business leaders. This paper examines the manner in which American Indian leaders negotiate the boundaries between their indigenous organizations and the non-indigenous communities in which they do business. Through a series of qualitative interviews, we find that American Indian business leaders fall back on a strong sense of “self”, which allows them to maintain effective leadership across boundaries. This is highly consistent with theories of authentic leadership. Furthermore, we find that leaders define self through their collective identity, which is heavily influenced by tribal affiliation and tribal culture. We add to the literature on authentic leadership by showing the role that culture and collective identity have in creating leader authenticity within the indigenous community

Improving child nutrition and development through community-based childcare centres in Malawi - The NEEP-IE study: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Abstract Background The Nutrition Embedded Evaluation Programme Impact Evaluation (NEEP-IE) study is a cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate the impact of a childcare centre-based integrated nutritional and agricultural intervention on the diets, nutrition and development of young children in Malawi. The intervention includes activities to improve nutritious food production and training/behaviour-change communication to improve food intake, care and hygiene practices. This paper presents the rationale and study design for this randomised control trial. Methods Sixty community-based childcare centres (CBCCs) in rural communities around Zomba district, Malawi, were randomised to either (1) a control group where children were attending CBCCs supported by Save the Children’s Early Childhood Health and Development (ECD) programme, or (2) an intervention group where nutritional and agricultural support activities were provided alongside the routine provision of the Save the Children’s ECD programme. Primary outcomes at child level include dietary intake (measured through 24-h recall), whilst secondary outcomes include child development (Malawi Development Assessment Tool (MDAT)) and nutritional status (anthropometric measurements). At household level, primary outcomes include smallholder farmer production output and crop-mix (recall of last production season). Intermediate outcomes along theorised agricultural and nutritional pathways were measured. During this trial, we will follow a mixed-methods approach and undertake child-, household-, CBCC- and market-level surveys and assessments as well as in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with project stakeholders. Discussion Assessing the simultaneous impact of preschool meals on diets, nutrition, child development and agriculture is a complex undertaking. This study is the first to explicitly examine, from a food systems perspective, the impact of a preschool meals programme on dietary choices, alongside outcomes in the nutritional, child development and agricultural domains. The findings of this evaluation will provide evidence to support policymakers in the scale-up of national programmes. Trial registration ISRCTN registry, ID: ISRCTN96497560 . Registered on 21 September 2016

Pulse propagation in turbidity currents

Submarine turbidity currents are a key mechanism in the transportation of clastic sediments to deep seas. Such currents may initiate with a complex longitudinal flow structure comprising flow pulses (for example, by being sourced from retrogressive sea floor slope failures) or acquire such structure during run‐out (for example, following flow combination downstream of confluences). A key question is how far along channel pathway complex flow structure is preserved within turbidity currents as they run out and thus if flow initiation mechanism and proximity to source may be inferred from the vertical structure of their deposits. To address this question, physical modelling of saline flows has been conducted to investigate the dynamics of single‐pulsed versus multi‐pulsed density driven currents. The data suggest that, under most circumstances, individual pulses within a multi‐pulsed flow must merge. Therefore, initiation signatures will only be preserved in deposits upstream of the merging point and may be distorted approaching it; downstream of the merging point, all initiation signals will be lost. This new understanding of merging phenomenon within multi‐pulsed gravity currents broadens our ability to interpret multi‐pulsed turbidites

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Promoting Cultural Competence in a Majority White Elementary School

To prepare students for an increasingly globalized world, they must develop a high level of cultural competency enabling them to not only better work together but to appreciate their ability to effect positive change in the world. This research seeks to understand how teachers at a majority White elementary school in Northern California, infuse culturally responsive pedagogy into their teaching. Most of the current research in education concentrates on incorporating social justice education and the importance of culturally competent teachers in diverse or majority-minority schools. However, as many schools remain highly segregated by race, ethnicity, and class, this fails to address the significance of teaching cultural competence to students in majority White schools. A mixed methods approach, including open-ended interviews and survey data was used to gain insight into teachers’ understanding of cultural competence, their current classroom practice and the challenges they face. The research also addressed what affect the school’s teacher professional development on White Racial Identity and White privilege had on their classrooms and curriculum. The results of this study reveal that multicultural education still reigns throughout the curriculum, especially in the lower grades. However, teachers are actively working to infuse more age-appropriate social justice pedagogy and cultural diversity into their classrooms and curriculum. Teachers feel a responsibility to ensure students are prepared for the future and despite a shortage in diverse age-appropriate literature, backlash from parents, and an unfamiliarity with strategies to teach cultural competence, endeavor to incorporate more culturally responsive pedagogy to ensure student success

Homeless mothers: coping and adaptation

As affordable housing resources diminish in cities throughout the country, poor families increasingly join the ranks of the homeless. This study considers the question of whether there is an association between coping ability and adaptation and the conditions of homelessness for homeless mothers. The research design involves in-person interviews with 80 homeless mothers residing at a shelter for homeless families in New York City. All were on public assistance at the time of the study, had at least one child, and had been at the shelter for no more than 4 months. The study considers two types of coping, problem-focused, which involves active efforts to address the stressor, and emotion-focused, which involves directing attention away from the stressor through defensive mechanisms such as avoidance. This study asked whether the type of coping, problem-focused or emotion-focused, is associated with the number of times that homeless families relocated, the total amount of time that they were homeless and the number of concurrent stressful life events they faced in the 3 years prior to the study. It also considered whether these three independent variables, number of relocations, duration of homelessness, and number of life events, were associated with adaptation to implicit and explicit shelter expectations. Results indicate that homeless mothers who relocate four or more times utilize defensive emotion-focused coping strategies more than mothers who relocate three times or less. Additionally, homeless mothers who have experienced 20 or more stressful life events utilize more emotion-focused coping strategies than mothers who experience fewer than 20 stressful life events. Policy makers and clinicians should incorporate the results of this study as well as others documenting the detrimental effects of frequent relocations and numerous stressful life events on the coping capacity of homeless mothers in designing social policy and clinical services for this population.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-207)

Native American Cultural Capital and Business Strategy: The Culture-of-Origin Effect

This commentary examines the use of American Indian culture in the strategic marketing of goods and services produced from within the American Indian community. Building on concepts from multiple academic disciplines, we introduce a new construct for this practice: the "culture-of-origin" effect. Specifically, the culture-of-origin effect is the strategic use of one's cultural identity as a resource that increases the value of one's products. Moreover, we explore the ethical ramifications of exploiting one's cultural identity for capital gain by highlighting the quandary that emerges when individuals seek to profit from a resource (cultural capital) that belongs collectively to the tribe