Individual leader to interdependent leadership: A case study in leadership development and tripartite evaluation

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Sage Publications.The Problem - In this case study we see a move away from orthodox views of school leadership as “headship” to a more contemporary model of educational leadership wherein we note a departure from functional, curricula-based school leadership toward more human resource development (HRD) approaches. The aim of this study was to consider the effectiveness of an educational development program for middle leaders within an educational establishment. The Solution - We examined the impact of a bespoke higher education leadership development intervention in Leadership (and Change) on the formation and cohesiveness of a newly formed innovative leadership structure. The Stakeholders - The leadership development intervention was designed through a tripartite collaboration including a university, senior school leaders, and staff. The intervention was designed to shift leadership from individual leader agency to interdependent human leadership agency. Through tripartite evaluation we uncover leadership development praxis that transcends the boundaries of conventional educational leadership and reemphasizes the benefits of bridging the academic/practitioner divide and the application of theory to praxis

Identification, replication and characterization of epigenetic remodelling in the aging genome:A cross population analysis

Aging is a complex biological process regulated by multiple cellular pathways and molecular mechanisms including epigenetics. Using genome-wide DNA methylation data measured in a large collection of Scottish old individuals, we performed discovery association analysis to identify age-methylated CpGs and replicated them in two independent Danish cohorts. The double-replicated CpGs were characterized by distribution over gene regions and location in relation to CpG islands. The replicated CpGs were further characterized by involvement in biological pathways to study their functional implications in aging. We identified 67,604 age-associated CpG sites reaching genome-wide significance of FWE

Long-Run Consequences of Natural Disasters: Evidence from Tangshan

Exploiting Tangshan 1976 - the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century - as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate the cohort-specific effects of a historical shock on contemporary socio-economic outcomes. While cohorts born after the earthquake were considerably larger, the adverse post-disaster conditions did not translate into lasting impacts on schooling and labour market outcomes. Cohorts at schooling age during the earthquake, however, exhibit considerably lower education levels today, particularly among the female. Despite lower education, there is no evidence for adverse labour market outcomes. We conduct extensive robustness checks and argue that the effect is causal

The frailty index outperforms DNA methylation age and its derivatives as an indicator of biological age

The measurement of biological age as opposed to chronological age is important to allow the study of factors that are responsible for the heterogeneity in the decline in health and function ability among individuals during aging. Various measures of biological aging have been proposed. Frailty indices based on health deficits in diverse body systems have been well studied, and we have documented the use of a frailty index (FI(34)) composed of 34 health items, for measuring biological age. A different approach is based on leukocyte DNA methylation. It has been termed DNA methylation age, and derivatives of this metric called age acceleration difference and age acceleration residual have also been employed. Any useful measure of biological age must predict survival better than chronological age does. Meta-analyses indicate that age acceleration difference and age acceleration residual are significant predictors of mortality, qualifying them as indicators of biological age. In this article, we compared the measures based on DNA methylation with FI(34). Using a well-studied cohort, we assessed the efficiency of these measures side by side in predicting mortality. In the presence of chronological age as a covariate, FI(34) was a significant predictor of mortality, whereas none of the DNA methylation age-based metrics were. The outperformance of FI(34) over DNA methylation age measures was apparent when FI(34) and each of the DNA methylation age measures were used together as explanatory variables, along with chronological age: FI(34) remained significant but the DNA methylation measures did not. These results indicate that FI(34) is a robust predictor of biological age, while these DNA methylation measures are largely a statistical reflection of the passage of chronological time

DNA methylation and the epigenetic clock in relation to physical frailty in older people:The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Background: The biological mechanisms underlying frailty in older people are poorly understood. There is some evidence to suggest that DNA methylation patterns may be altered in frail individuals. Methods: Participants were 791 people aged 70 years from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. DNA methylation was measured in whole blood. Biological age was estimated using two measures of DNA methylation-based age acceleration - extrinsic and intrinsic epigenetic age acceleration. We carried out an epigenome-wide association study of physical frailty, as defined by the Fried phenotype. Multinomial logistic regression was used to calculate relative risk ratios for being physically frail or pre-frail according to epigenetic age acceleration. Results: There was a single significant (P=1.16x10-7) association in the epigenome-wide association study comparing frail versus not frail. The same CpG was not significant when comparing pre-frail versus not frail. Greater extrinsic epigenetic age acceleration was associated with an increased risk of being physically frail, but not of being pre-frail. For a year increase in extrinsic epigenetic age acceleration, age- and sex-adjusted relative risk ratios (95% CI) for being physically frail or pre-frail were 1.06 (1.02, 1.10) and 1.02 (1.00, 1.04) respectively. After further adjustment for smoking and chronic disease, the association with physical frailty remained significant. Intrinsic epigenetic age acceleration was not associated with physical frailty status.Conclusions: People who are biologically older, as indexed by greater extrinsic epigenetic age acceleration, are more likely to be physically frail. Future research will need to investigate whether epigenetic age acceleration plays a causal role in the onset of physical frailty

DNA methylation levels in candidate genes associated with chronological age in mammals are not conserved in a long-lived seabird

© 2017 De Paoli-Iseppi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Most seabirds do not have any outward identifiers of their chronological age, so estimation of seabird population age structure generally requires expensive, long-term banding studies. We investigated the potential to use a molecular age biomarker to estimate age in short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris). We quantified DNA methylation in several A. tenuirostris genes that have shown age-related methylation changes in mammals. In birds ranging from chicks to 21 years of age, bisulphite treated blood and feather DNA was sequenced and methylation levels analysed in 67 CpG sites in 13 target gene regions. From blood samples, five of the top relationships with age were identified in KCNC3 loci (CpG66: R2 = 0.325, p = 0.019). In feather samples ELOVL2 (CpG42: R2 = 0.285, p = 0.00048) and EDARADD (CpG46: R2 = 0.168, p = 0.0067) were also weakly correlated with age. However, the majority of markers had no clear association with age (of 131 comparisons only 12 had a p-value < 0.05) and statistical analysis using a penalised lasso approach did not produce an accurate ageing model. Our data indicate that some age-related signatures identified in orthologous mammalian genes are not conserved in the long-lived short tailed shearwater. Alternative molecular approaches will be required to identify a reliable biomarker of chronological age in these seabirds

Modularity in Protein Complex and Drug Interactions Reveals New Polypharmacological Properties

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of interconnectivity in a large range of molecular and human disease-related systems. Network medicine has emerged as a new paradigm to deal with complex diseases. Connections between protein complexes and key diseases have been suggested for decades. However, it was not until recently that protein complexes were identified and classified in sufficient amounts to carry out a large-scale analysis of the human protein complex system. We here present the first systematic and comprehensive set of relationships between protein complexes and associated drugs and analyzed their topological features. The network structure is characterized by a high modularity, both in the bipartite graph and in its projections, indicating that its topology is highly distinct from a random network and that it contains a rich and heterogeneous internal modular structure. To unravel the relationships between modules of protein complexes, drugs and diseases, we investigated in depth the origins of this modular structure in examples of particular diseases. This analysis unveils new associations between diseases and protein complexes and highlights the potential role of polypharmacological drugs, which target multiple cellular functions to combat complex diseases driven by gain-of-function mutations

The Influence of International Law on the International Movement of Persons

Many migration theories identify ‘the law’ as a significant constraint on the international movement of persons. While this constraint often operates through national migration legislation, this study examines the influence of international law in shaping contemporary patterns in the international movement of persons at the macro level. The analysis begins with an examination of the long-established power of a State to regulate cross-border movement of persons as an inherent attribute of State sovereignty, together with the accepted limitations on a State’s power to control entry and exit. Yet, international law reaches well beyond the movement of people across borders. The development of international human rights law has been a key constraint on state action in the United Nations era by also regulating the treatment of migrants within a State’s borders. The study considers how international law has responded to current migration issues, including: protection of migrant women and children; suppression of smuggling and trafficking of people; labour migration; and environmental migration. As in other areas of international society, there has been a proliferation of institutions through which international migration law is made and enforced. The most prominent among them are the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but the establishment of other entities with overlapping mandates has given rise to calls for a new international migration regime based on streamlined institutional arrangements. The study concludes that international law is an imperfect framework for regulating the international movement of persons because it has developed in a piecemeal fashion over a long time to deal with issues of concern at particular points in human history. Yet, despite its shortfalls, international law and its associated institutions unquestionably play a most important role in constraining and channeling state authority over the international movement of persons