14,834 research outputs found

    Problem-based leadership: nurturing managers during turbulent times

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    Purpose – The paper explores problem-based learning (PBL) as a useful methodology in leadership development during turbulent times. It identifies several pertinent action points for managers to lead through problems while understanding their capacity to empower themselves and others to face challenges at work. Design/methodology/approach – Broad concepts of PBL are used to distil the characteristics of this methodology and how they might be applicable to leadership development. An actual case of PBL in leadership education and training is employed to illustrate the processes of problem solving and reflective action-taking. Findings – When confronted by problems, managers should adopt a learning-oriented mindset and draw on the strengths of others to generate immediate solutions for experimentation. In doing so, they need to accept failure as a prerequisite for creative tensions to be generated and applied in messy circumstances. Until they think out of the box, they will continue to solve problems in tried-and-tested ways obstructing the emergence of revolutionary solutions. Practical implications – In order for managers to make an impact on organizational process and improvement, they need to focus on the action and learn components of PBL. They should be given the space to listen to their own “voice” and internalize the “voice” of others through reflection and dialogue. They should also be recognized for their courage and boldness in confronting problems even if more problems are generated in the process. It is facing the goliath that managers truly grow to become real leaders. Originality/value – Although the concept of PBL has been around for a long while, its applicability to leadership development has not been sufficiently explored in both theory and practice. This paper brings another dimension to the common idea of problem solving where solution seeking is not an end it itself. At best, it is a means to discovering the potential of true leadership in those whose mindset is focused on learning and reflective decision-making

    Looking for Whitman: the Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman

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    This Level 1 Digital Humanities project, " Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman," will engage faculty and students at four academic institutions--New York City College of Technology; New York University; University of Mary Washington; and Rutgers University, Camden--in a concurrent, connected, semester-long inquiry into the relationship of Whitman's poetry to local geography and history. Each class will explore the interrelationship between a specific locale and a particular phase of the poet's work. Utilizing open-source tools to connect classrooms, the interdisciplinary project will create a collaborative, online space in which students can participate in a dynamic, social, web based learning environment. In its conception and articulation, this project reflects the central themes of Whitman's work: democracy, diversity, and connectedness

    Looking For Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman - Level 2

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    This project engages faculty and students at four universities--New York City College of Technology (CUNY), New York University, University of Mary Washington, and Rutgers University-Camden--in a concurrent, connected, semester-long inquiry into the relationship of Whitman's poetry to local geography and history. Each class will explore the relationship between its specific locale and a particular phase of the poet's work. Utilizing open-source tools to connect college classes from multiple institutions, the interdisciplinary project breaks down traditional institutional walls as it creates a collaborative online space in which students can participate in a dynamic, social, web-based learning environment. In its conception and in its dissemination, this project expands the traditional bounds of classroom and institutional space. In doing so, it reflects the central themes of Whitman's career: democracy, diversity, openness, and connectedness

    The early expansion and evolutionary dynamics of POU class genes.

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    The POU genes represent a diverse class of animal-specific transcription factors that play important roles in neurogenesis, pluripotency, and cell-type specification. Although previous attempts have been made to reconstruct the evolution of the POU class, these studies have been limited by a small number of representative taxa, and a lack of sequences from basally branching organisms. In this study, we performed comparative analyses on available genomes and sequences recovered through "gene fishing" to better resolve the topology of the POU gene tree. We then used ancestral state reconstruction to map the most likely changes in amino acid evolution for the conserved domains. Our work suggests that four of the six POU families evolved before the last common ancestor of living animals-doubling previous estimates-and were followed by extensive clade-specific gene loss. Amino acid changes are distributed unequally across the gene tree, consistent with a neofunctionalization model of protein evolution. We consider our results in the context of early animal evolution, and the role of POU5 genes in maintaining stem cell pluripotency

    Ambulation protocols leading to decreased postoperative complications and hospital stay

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    Background: In the postoperative course, patients are routinely encouraged to ambulate as frequently as possible. Typically in the hospital this can become burdensome to the staff and often becomes low priority. Patients are also not aware of the frequency and quality of the ambulation that is sufficient in the postoperative period. At present, patients on the surgical floor who are completely independent and without any devices (eg. Oxygen, nasogastric tubes, chest tubes) are freely able to ambulate at will although there is no reliable way to track this progress. Other patients with devices are limited to waiting for nursing or ancillary staff to assist them with securing the devices that they require in the postoperative period. Ambulation has been positively associated with decreased postoperative complications ranging from bowel function to deep venous thrombosis to pneumonia.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1065/thumbnail.jp

    Beyond Friending: BuddyPress and the Social, Networked, Open-Source Classroom

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    Classrooms have always been networks, of a sort, with professors and students forming an interlaced series of nodes that take shape over the course of a semester, but tools like BuddyPress and WordPress can make those networks more open, more porous, and more varied. In very useful ways, the classroom-as-social-network can help create engaging spaces for learning in which students are more connected to one another, to their professors, and to the wider world

    Chain Reactions: Archives and the Value Chain in Chemistry\u27s Scientific Communications

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    We have heard a great deal about problems of expensive scientific journals; in this last session we are focusing on some solutions to those problems. In order to see our way out of the present cost crisis, we need to broaden our view beyond the value chain associated with scientific journals: journals are part of a much larger value chain of scientific communication. This communication occurs before, during, inside, outside, and after the journal article is published. This suggests that we ought to reframe the question posed in this workshop, and ask ourselves not about the “needs” of chemical and chemical engineering journals, but rather examine the communication needs of chemists and chemical engineers. Is the publishing segment of the cycle serving the ends of the cycle as a whole? Could that segment serve the whole better than it does today? This analysis suggests that there are three critical solutions to pursue: creative commons; open access; and library-based archiving. Of these three solutions, open access to the literature of chemistry is a key to your ability to redistribute, reuse, add value to, mine, explore, and archive the record of your system of science, without the constraints of paper-based media, commercial ownership, institutional wealth, or fragmentation by publisher

    Xenopus Drf1, a Regulator of Cdc7, Displays Checkpoint-dependent Accumulation on Chromatin during an S-phase Arrest

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    We have cloned a Xenopus Dbf4-related factor named Drf1 and characterized this protein by using Xenopus egg extracts. Drf1 forms an active complex with the kinase Cdc7. However, most of the Cdc7 in egg extracts is not associated with Drf1, which raises the possibility that some or all of the remaining Cdc7 is bound to another Dbf4-related protein. Immunodepletion of Drf1 does not prevent DNA replication in egg extracts. Consistent with this observation, Cdc45 can still associate with chromatin in Drf1-depleted extracts, albeit at significantly reduced levels. Nonetheless, Drf1 displays highly regulated binding to replicating chromatin. Treatment of egg extracts with aphidicolin results in a substantial accumulation of Drf1 on chromatin. This accumulation is blocked by addition of caffeine and by immunodepletion of either ATR or Claspin. These observations suggest that the increased binding of Drf1 to aphidicolin-treated chromatin is an active process that is mediated by a caffeine-sensitive checkpoint pathway containing ATR and Claspin. Abrogation of this pathway also leads to a large increase in the binding of Cdc45 to chromatin. This increase is substantially reduced in the absence of Drf1, which suggests that regulation of Drf1 might be involved in the suppression of Cdc45 loading during replication arrest. We also provide evidence that elimination of this checkpoint causes resumed initiation of DNA replication in both Xenopus tissue culture cells and egg extracts. Taken together, these observations argue that Drf1 is regulated by an intra-S-phase checkpoint mechanism that down-regulates the loading of Cdc45 onto chromatin containing DNA replication blocks
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