Proposal to the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering Program, National Science Foundation: Role-Play Scenarios for Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research

We propose to develop and assess role-play scenarios to teach central topics in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to graduate students in science and engineering. Together the scenarios will cover plagiarism, authorship, conflict of interest, interpersonal conflicts in mentoring, and concerns about compliance with research regulations on human participants in research, animal subjects, or hazardous substances. Two scenarios will present potential whistleblowing situations. Intellectual merit: Few previous studies have carefully assessed the effectiveness of role-play in teaching ethics. We will conduct a rigorous, systematic assessment of role-play, using multiple methods, with a diverse group of graduate students. We will examine whether role-play helps students identify moral issues in research, understand multiple perspectives in ethical disputes, and negotiate practical solutions to moral problems. We will document how students’ conceptions of RCR change. We will determine whether students retain their new knowledge and skills. For this project, we will draw on our previous experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Broader impacts: Collaborating with both graduate and undergraduate students, we will develop educational materials that can be adopted by graduate programs in all science and engineering departments. These materials will be disseminated through professional meetings and archived online. We believe that by engaging students through the role-play scenarios, we would teach graduate students to handle ethical problems in RCR effectively. As an outcome of this project, we expect to find that long after students have participated in role-play sessions, they will recall the lessons of those sessions, and they will be able to apply those lessons to a wide range of ethical problems that they may encounter in their professional careers

New Models of Hybrid Leadership in Global Higher Education

This manuscript highlights the development of a leadership preparation program known as the Nanyang Technological University Leadership Academy (NTULA), exploring the leadership challenges unique to a university undergoing rapid growth in a highly multicultural context, and the hybrid model of leadership it developed in response to globalization. It asks the research question of how the university adapted to a period of accelerated growth and transition by adopting a hybrid approach to academic leadership. The paper uses qualitative methodology to review NTULA’s first cohort, including interviews and participant survey responses. The findings illuminate three key areas of the hybridized leadership model that are challenging to balance, including managing the transition from the leadership style required to drive rapid institutional change to the approach needed to preserve that growth, how leaders reconcile the need to be responsive to both administration and faculty, and how to lead in a highly diverse, multicultural space

Protein components of a cytochrome P-450 linalool 8-methyl hydroxylase

The cytochrome P-450 heme-thiolate monooxygenases that hydroxylate monoterpene hydrocarbon groups are effective models for the cytochrome P-450 family. We have purified and characterized the three proteins from a P-450-dependent linalool 8-methyl hydroxylase in Pseudomonas putida (incognita) strain PpG777. The proteins resemble the camphor 5-exohydroxylase components in chemical and physical properties; however, they show neither immunological cross-reactivity nor catalytic activity in heterogenous recombination. These two systems provide an excellent model to probe more deeply the heme-thiolate reaction center, molecular domains of substrate specificity, redox-pair interactions, and the regulation of the reaction cycle

Electronic Structure of Cytochrome P450

The optical properties of P450 have been investigated by means of polarized absorption spectroscopy of single crystals of camphor- bound P450CAM in the oxidized, reduced, and CO-reduced states, and iterative extended Ruckel (IEH) calculations. The heme chromophores are orientated such that transitions polarized in the heme plane (x,y-polarized) can be readily distinguished from transitions polarized perpendicular to the heme plane (z-polarized) . High spin oxidized P450 exhibits two broad z-polarized bands, at 567 and 323 nm. IEH calculations suggest that these bands arise from cysteine mercaptide sulfur-to-iron charge transfer transitions. High spin reduced P450 has no z-polarized bands. IEH calculations suggest that loss of these bands occurs because the cysteine sulfur is protonated to a mercaptan. Low spin CO-P450 has an intense x,y-polarized band at 363 nm. This transition, assigned as a mercaptide sulfur-to-porphyrin charge transfer transition, has the correct symmetry to mix with the Soret and may cause the anomalous red shift of the Soret

Boolean network model predicts cell cycle sequence of fission yeast

A Boolean network model of the cell-cycle regulatory network of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces Pombe) is constructed solely on the basis of the known biochemical interaction topology. Simulating the model in the computer, faithfully reproduces the known sequence of regulatory activity patterns along the cell cycle of the living cell. Contrary to existing differential equation models, no parameters enter the model except the structure of the regulatory circuitry. The dynamical properties of the model indicate that the biological dynamical sequence is robustly implemented in the regulatory network, with the biological stationary state G1 corresponding to the dominant attractor in state space, and with the biological regulatory sequence being a strongly attractive trajectory. Comparing the fission yeast cell-cycle model to a similar model of the corresponding network in S. cerevisiae, a remarkable difference in circuitry, as well as dynamics is observed. While the latter operates in a strongly damped mode, driven by external excitation, the S. pombe network represents an auto-excited system with external damping.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure