Embedding Innovation: How Large Organizations Can Succeed at Innovation in the Long Term

Making innovation stick has proven difficult to many large organizations. The challenge these organizations face is to turn innovation from a buzzword into a systemic and widely distributed competency. This study explored how to do this by asking the question “How might large organizations enable and nurture innovation over the long term?” The study used a combination of research methods and adopted a design approach to answering the question. Research methods included literature review, case studies, surveys, semi-structured interviews, innovation canvassing and foresighting. The research identified that in order to embed innovation into an organization’s DNA, that organization must have a strong innovation orientation, and must demonstrate aptitude in five critical areas: strategy, culture, process, portfolio and scalability. These findings were used to propose a roadmap to innovation for the City of Toronto’s Chief Corporate Officer; one that embodies the characteristics of successful, long-term approaches to innovation that would allow the organization to transform itself into a more innovative organization

Occupational Therapy Adjunct Faculty Self-Perceptions of Readiness to Teach

To meet the demands of a growing profession, occupational therapy (OT) education programs rely on adjunct faculty to augment their faculty pool. Clinicians transitioning into faculty roles frequently do not have formal training in teaching and learning practices. This problem is compounded with adjunct faculty, as they are not using best teaching practices in OT education programs and do not have easy access to university resources. A qualitative study was conducted to describe the perceptions of new OT adjunct faculty on their degree of preparedness to teach, the supports needed to be successful in transitioning from clinician to academician, and their familiarity with and use of evidence-based teaching strategies. New OT adjunct faculty perceived they were prepared to teach, provided they have supports in place and command of the subject. New OT adjunct faculty make limited use of EBTP and use occupational therapy skills to aid in classroom teaching. New OT adjunct faculty feel ready to teach in terms of content knowledge but not in terms of pedagogical knowledge. They do not fully understand their academic role and have limited access to pedagogical content provided by their academic institutions

Occupational Therapy Assistant Students’ Perspectives About the Development of Clinical Reasoning

A mandatory component of the training of occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students is the development of their clinical reasoning skills. As the demand for OTAs continues to increase in response to the growing need for occupational therapy services, the number of academic programs to prepare these future therapists has expanded. Unfortunately, there is no empirical literature addressing the preparation of OTA students, specifically the development of their clinical reasoning skills. Artifact analysis, focus groups, and questionnaires were used to explore OTA students’ perceptions of what Level II fieldwork learning experiences facilitated the development of their clinical reasoning skills. The results suggest OTA students develop clinical reasoning skills during Level II fieldwork by engaging in a variety of learning experiences with support from fieldwork educators who are welcoming and approachable. Learning experiences that students perceived as most helpful to the development of clinical reasoning included hands-on learning, opportunities to witness best practice, receipt of clear expectations and regular feedback, gradual responsibility for caseload management, and opportunities for collaboration. This study adds to the profession’s body of knowledge and has implications for OTA educators, fieldwork educators, OTA students, and future consumers of occupational therapy services

Occupational Therapy Assistant Students ’ Perspectives About the Development of Clinical Reasoning

A mandatory component of the training of occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students is the development of their clinical reasoning skills. As the demand for OTAs continues to increase in response to the growing need for occupational therapy services, the number of academic programs to prepare these future therapists has expanded. Unfortunately, there is no empirical literature addressing the preparation of OTA students, specifically the development of their clinical reasoning skills. Artifact analysis, focus groups, and questionnaires were used to explore OTA students’ perceptions of what Level II fieldwork learning experiences facilitated the development of their clinical reasoning skills. The results suggest OTA students develop clinical reasoning skills during Level II fieldwork by engaging in a variety of learning experiences with support from fieldwork educators who are welcoming and approachable. Learning experiences that students perceived as most helpful to the development of clinical reasoning included hands-on learning, opportunities to witness best practice, receipt of clear expectations and regular feedback, gradual responsibility for caseload management, and opportunities for collaboration. This study adds to the profession’s body of knowledge and has implications for OTA educators, fieldwork educators, OTA students, and future consumers of occupational therapy services

Clinical and Professional Reasoning Development in Level II Fieldwork: Occupational Therapy Assistant Students’ Perception

Occupational therapy academic programs are tasked with preparing occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students to develop and use clinical and professional reasoning in practice. A component of this academic education, Level II fieldwork (FW), develops clinical and professional reasoning by allowing students to practice this skill. Although numerous studies have investigated this topic in occupational therapy students, only one small study has previously investigated this in OTA students during Level II FW. Thus, we designed a mixed methods study of OTA students during Level II FW (n = 58) to confirm and expand our knowledge of learning experiences that develop clinical and professional reasoning skills. Six major aspects of Level II FW were identified by participants as contributing to the development of their clinical and professional reasoning skills: “hands-on experience,” “thinking on your feet,” “the value of community-based placements,” “the supervision approach of the FW educator,” “application of evidence-based practice,” and “interprofessional interactions.” Three of these themes were novel as they did not emerge from the previous study. According to most participants their clinical and professional reasoning development was positively impacted when their FW educator chunked information (88.5%), modeled best practice (84.6%), asked questions (84.6%), or engaged in story-telling (84.6%), with the latter two being perceived as most impactful. The study results suggest that the development of clinical and professional reasoning may be highly individualized and driven by what students experience

Observations of Arp 220 using Herschel-SPIRE: An Unprecedented View of the Molecular Gas in an Extreme Star Formation Environment

We present Herschel SPIRE-FTS observations of Arp~220, a nearby ULIRG. The FTS continuously covers 190 -- 670 microns, providing a good measurement of the continuum and detection of several molecular and atomic species. We detect luminous CO (J = 4-3 to 13-12) and water ladders with comparable total luminosity; very high-J HCN absorption; OH+, H2O+, and HF in absorption; and CI and NII. Modeling of the continuum yields warm dust, with T = 66 K, and an unusually large optical depth of ~5 at 100 microns. Non-LTE modeling of the CO shows two temperature components: cold molecular gas at T ~ 50 K and warm molecular gas at T ~1350 K. The mass of the warm gas is 10% of the cold gas, but dominates the luminosity of the CO ladder. The temperature of the warm gas is in excellent agreement with H2 rotational lines. At 1350 K, H2 dominates the cooling (~20 L_sun/M_sun) in the ISM compared to CO (~0.4 L_sun/M_sun). We found that only a non-ionizing source such as the mechanical energy from supernovae and stellar winds can excite the warm gas and satisfy the energy budget of ~20 L_sun/M_sun. We detect a massive molecular outflow in Arp 220 from the analysis of strong P-Cygni line profiles observed in OH+, H2O+, and H2O. The outflow has a mass > 10^{7} M_sun and is bound to the nuclei with velocity < 250 km/s. The large column densities observed for these molecular ions strongly favor the existence of an X-ray luminous AGN (10^{44} ergs/s) in Arp 220.Comment: Accepted in ApJ on September 1, 201

Assessing responsible innovation training

There is broad agreement that one important aspect of responsible innovation (RI) is to provide training on its principles and practices to current and future researchers and innovators, notably including doctoral students. Much less agreement can be observed concerning the question of what this training should consist of, how it should be delivered and how it could be assessed. The increasing institutional embedding of RI leads to calls for the alignment of RI training with training in other subjects. One can therefore observe a push towards the official assessment of RI training, for example in the recent call for proposals for centres for doctoral training by UK Research and Innovation. This editorial article takes its point of departure from the recognition that the RI community will need to react to the call for assessment of RI training. It provides an overview of the background and open questions around RI training and assessment as a background of examples of RI training assessment at doctoral level. There is unlikely to be one right way of assessing RI training across institutions and disciplines, but we expect that the examples provided in this article can help RI scholars and practitioners orient their training and its assessment in ways that are academically viable as well as supportive of the overall aims of RI

First look at the Fomalhaut debris disk with the Spitzer Space Telescope

We present Spitzer Space Telescope early release observations of Fomalhaut, a nearby A-type star with dusty circumstellar debris. The disk is spatially resolved at 24, 70, and 160 � m using the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). While the disk orientation and outer radius are comparable to values measured in the submillimeter, the disk inner radius cannot be precisely defined: the central hole in the submillimeter ring is at least partially filled with emission from warm dust, seen inSpitzerInfrared Spectrograph (IRS) 17.5‐34 � m spectra and MIPS 24 � m images. The disk surface brightness becomes increasingly asymmetric toward shorter wavelengths, with the south-southeast ansa always brighter than the north-northwest one. This asymmetry may reflect perturbations on the disk by an unseen interior planet. Subject headingg circumstellar matter — infrared: stars — planetary systems — stars: individual (Fomalhaut

The Primarily Undergraduate Nanomaterials Cooperative: A New Model for Supporting Collaborative Research at Small Institutions on a National Scale

The Primarily Undergraduate Nanomaterials Cooperative (PUNC) is an organization for research-active faculty studying nanomaterials at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), where undergraduate teaching and research go hand-in-hand. In this perspective, we outline the differences in maintaining an active research group at a PUI compared to an R1 institution. We also discuss the work of PUNC, which focuses on community building, instrument sharing, and facilitating new collaborations. Currently consisting of 37 members from across the United States, PUNC has created an online community consisting of its Web site (nanocooperative.org), a weekly online summer group meeting program for faculty and students, and a Discord server for informal conversations. Additionally, in-person symposia at ACS conferences and PUNC-specific conferences are planned for the future. It is our hope that in the years to come PUNC will be seen as a model organization for community building and research support at primarily undergraduate institutions

Multimodal characterization of the late effects of traumatic brain injury: a methodological overview of the Late Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury Project

Epidemiological studies suggest that a single moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease (AD and PD). Histopathological studies describe complex neurodegenerative pathologies in individuals exposed to single moderate-to-severe TBI or repetitive mild TBI, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). However, the clinicopathological links between TBI and post-traumatic neurodegenerative diseases such as AD, PD, and CTE remain poorly understood. Here we describe the methodology of the Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) study, whose goals are to characterize chronic post-traumatic neuropathology and to identify in vivo biomarkers of post-traumatic neurodegeneration. LETBI participants undergo extensive clinical evaluation using National Institutes of Health TBI Common Data Elements, proteomic and genomic analysis, structural and functional MRI, and prospective consent for brain donation. Selected brain specimens undergo ultra-high resolution ex vivo MRI and histopathological evaluation including whole mount analysis. Co-registration of ex vivo and in vivo MRI data enables identification of ex vivo lesions that were present during life. In vivo signatures of postmortem pathology are then correlated with cognitive and behavioral data to characterize the clinical phenotype(s) associated with pathological brain lesions. We illustrate the study methods and demonstrate proof of concept for this approach by reporting results from the first LETBI participant, who despite the presence of multiple in vivo and ex vivo pathoanatomic lesions had normal cognition and was functionally independent until her mid-80s. The LETBI project represents a multidisciplinary effort to characterize post-traumatic neuropathology and identify in vivo signatures of postmortem pathology in a prospective study