Be Careful What You Ask For: How Highly Inclusive Leaders Diminish Upward Communication Quality

As organizations have come to realize the value of having employees offer ideas, suggestions, and observations that can improve organizational effectiveness, scholars have sought to better understand how leaders can cultivate higher levels of upward communication within their organizations. To date, research has shown that leaders who signal inclusiveness and openness to their followers' ideas and concerns are able to create a psychologically safe environment that encourages individuals to take the risk of communicating upwards. However, an implicit and untested assumption across this literature is that inclusive leadership also has a similar positive effect on the quality of communication subordinates provide. In this dissertation, I challenge conventional wisdom that more is better by suggesting that highly inclusive leaders may elicit a higher quantity of upward communication from their followers, but potentially a lower quality. Drawing from established literatures on motivation, social exchange and self-censorship, I propose and find evidence for an inverted U-shaped relationship between inclusive leadership and individuals' upward communication quality, such that both highly exclusive and highly inclusive leaders negatively influence the quality of comments individuals provide. In doing so, I advance established theory by providing conceptual and empirical guidance on how managers should be mindful of the benefits of inclusive leadership while recognizing its potential costs.Doctor of Philosoph

Interfacing TuLiP with the JPL Statechart Autocoder: Initial progress toward synthesis of flight software from formal specifications

This paper describes the implementation of an interface connecting the two tools : the JPL SCA (Statechart Autocoder) and TuLiP (Temporal Logic Planning Toolbox) to enable the automatic synthesis of low level implementation code directly from formal specifications. With system dynamics, bounds on uncertainty and formal specifications as inputs, TuLiP synthesizes Mealy machines that are correct-by-construction. An interface is built that automatically translates these Mealy machines into UML statecharts. The SCA accepts the UML statecharts (as XML files) to synthesize flight-certified implementation code. The functionality of the interface is demonstrated through three example systems of varying complexity a) a simple thermostat b) a simple speed controller for an autonomous vehicle and c) a more complex speed controller for an autonomous vehicle with a map-element. In the thermostat controller, there is a specification regarding the desired temperature range that has to be met despite disturbance from the environment. Similarly, in the speed-controllers there are specifications about safe driving speeds depending on sensor health (sensors fail unpredictably) and the map-location. The significance of these demonstrations is the potential circumventing of some of the manual design of statecharts for flight software/controllers. As a result, we expect that less testing and validation will be necessary. In applications where the products of synthesis are used alongside manually designed components, extensive testing or new certificates of correctness of the composition may still be required

Anthropological and socioeconomic factors contributing to global antimicrobial resistance: a univariate and multivariable analysis

Background Understanding of the factors driving global antimicrobial resistance is limited. We analysed antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic consumption worldwide versus many potential contributing factors. Methods Using three sources of data (ResistanceMap, the WHO 2014 report on antimicrobial resistance, and contemporary publications), we created two global indices of antimicrobial resistance for 103 countries using data from 2008 to 2014: Escherichia coli resistance—the global average prevalence of E coli bacteria that were resistant to third-generation cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones, and aggregate resistance—the combined average prevalence of E coli and Klebsiella spp resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and carbapenems, and meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Antibiotic consumption data were obtained from the IQVIA MIDAS database. The World Bank DataBank was used to obtain data for governance, education, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, health-care spending, and community infrastructure (eg, sanitation). A corruption index was derived using data from Transparency International. We examined associations between antimicrobial resistance and potential contributing factors using simple correlation for a univariate analysis and a logistic regression model for a multivariable analysis. Findings In the univariate analysis, GDP per capita, education, infrastructure, public health-care spending, and antibiotic consumption were all inversely correlated with the two antimicrobial resistance indices, whereas higher temperatures, poorer governance, and the ratio of private to public health expenditure were positively correlated. In the multivariable regression analysis (confined to the 73 countries for which antibiotic consumption data were available) considering the effect of changes in indices on E coli resistance (R2 0·54) and aggregate resistance (R2 0·75), better infrastructure (p=0·014 and p=0·0052) and better governance (p=0·025 and p<0·0001) were associated with lower antimicrobial resistance indices. Antibiotic consumption was not significantly associated with either antimicrobial resistance index in the multivariable analysis (p=0·64 and p=0·070). Interpretation Reduction of antibiotic consumption will not be sufficient to control antimicrobial resistance because contagion—the spread of resistant strains and resistance genes—seems to be the dominant contributing factor. Improving sanitation, increasing access to clean water, and ensuring good governance, as well as increasing public health-care expenditure and better regulating the private health sector are all necessary to reduce global antimicrobial resistance

Overcoming the roadblocks to cardiac cell therapy using tissue engineering

Transplantations of various stem cells or their progeny have repeatedly improved cardiac performance in animal models of myocardial injury; however, the benefits observed in clinical trials have been generally less consistent. Some of the recognized challenges are poor engraftment of implanted cells and, in the case of human cardiomyocytes, functional immaturity and lack of electrical integration, leading to limited contribution to the heart’s contractile activity and increased arrhythmogenic risks. Advances in tissue and genetic engineering techniques are expected to improve the survival and integration of transplanted cells, and to support structural, functional, and bioenergetic recovery of the recipient hearts. Specifically, application of a prefabricated cardiac tissue patch to prevent dilation and to improve pumping efficiency of the infarcted heart offers a promising strategy for making stem cell therapy a clinical reality. [Display omitted

Augmented cardiac growth hormone signaling contributes to cardiomyopathy following genetic disruption of the cardiomyocyte circadian clock

Circadian clocks regulate numerous biological processes, at whole body, organ, and cellular levels. This includes both hormone secretion and target tissue sensitivity. Although growth hormone (GH) secretion is time-of-day-dependent (increased pulse amplitude during the sleep period), little is known regarding whether circadian clocks modulate GH sensitivity in target tissues. GH acts in part through induction of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), and excess GH/IGF1 signaling has been linked to pathologies such as insulin resistance, acromegaly, and cardiomyopathy. Interestingly, genetic disruption of the cardiomyocyte circadian clock leads to cardiac adverse remodeling, contractile dysfunction, and reduced lifespan. These observations led to the hypothesis that the cardiomyopathy observed following cardiomyocyte circadian clock disruption may be secondary to chronic activation of cardiac GH/IGF1 signaling. Here, we report that cardiomyocyte-specific BMAL1 knockout (CBK) mice exhibit increased cardiac GH sensitivity, as evidenced by augmented GH-induced STAT5 phosphorylation (relative to littermate controls) in the heart (but not in the liver). Moreover

Divergent functions for airway epithelial matrix metalloproteinase 7 and retinoic acid in experimental asthma.

The innate immune response of airway epithelial cells to airborne allergens initiates the development of T cell responses that are central to allergic inflammation. Although proteinase allergens induce the expression of interleukin 25, we show here that epithelial matrix metalloproteinase 7 (MMP7) was expressed during asthma and was required for the maximum activity of interleukin 25 in promoting the differentiation of T helper type 2 cells. Allergen-challenged Mmp7(-/-) mice had less airway hyper-reactivity and production of allergic inflammatory cytokines and higher expression of retinal dehydrogenase 1. Inhibition of retinal dehydrogenase 1 restored the asthma phenotype of Mmp7(-/-) mice and inhibited the responses of lung regulatory T cells, whereas exogenous administration of retinoic acid attenuated the asthma phenotype. Thus, MMP7 coordinates allergic lung inflammation by activating interleukin 25 while simultaneously inhibiting retinoid-dependent development of regulatory T cells

DRBM-ClustNet: A Deep Restricted Boltzmann-Kohonen Architecture for Data Clustering

A Bayesian Deep Restricted Boltzmann-Kohonen architecture for data clustering termed as DRBM-ClustNet is proposed. This core-clustering engine consists of a Deep Restricted Boltzmann Machine (DRBM) for processing unlabeled data by creating new features that are uncorrelated and have large variance with each other. Next, the number of clusters are predicted using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), followed by a Kohonen Network-based clustering layer. The processing of unlabeled data is done in three stages for efficient clustering of the non-linearly separable datasets. In the first stage, DRBM performs non-linear feature extraction by capturing the highly complex data representation by projecting the feature vectors of $d$ dimensions into $n$ dimensions. Most clustering algorithms require the number of clusters to be decided a priori, hence here to automate the number of clusters in the second stage we use BIC. In the third stage, the number of clusters derived from BIC forms the input for the Kohonen network, which performs clustering of the feature-extracted data obtained from the DRBM. This method overcomes the general disadvantages of clustering algorithms like the prior specification of the number of clusters, convergence to local optima and poor clustering accuracy on non-linear datasets. In this research we use two synthetic datasets, fifteen benchmark datasets from the UCI Machine Learning repository, and four image datasets to analyze the DRBM-ClustNet. The proposed framework is evaluated based on clustering accuracy and ranked against other state-of-the-art clustering methods. The obtained results demonstrate that the DRBM-ClustNet outperforms state-of-the-art clustering algorithms.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Enhancing Employees’ Duty Orientation and Moral Potency: Dual Mechanisms Linking Ethical Psychological Climate to Ethically‐Focused Proactive Behaviors

Based on social cognitive theory (SCT), we develop and test a model that links ethical psychological climate to ethically‐focused proactive behavior (i.e., ethical voice and ethical taking charge) via two distinct mechanisms (i.e., duty orientation and moral potency). Results from multi‐wave field studies conducted in the United States, Turkey, France, Vietnam, and India demonstrate that an ethical psychological climate indirectly influences employees’ ethical voice and ethical taking charge behaviors through the dual mechanisms of duty orientation and moral potency. Additionally, we find that individuals’ moral attentiveness strengthened these mediating processes. Together, these findings suggest that ethical psychological climate is an important antecedent of ethically‐focused proactive behavior by stimulating individuals’ sense of duty and enhancing their moral potency, particularly when employees are already highly attuned to moral issues