Core Conversations For The Greater Good: An Exploration Of Intrapersonal Communication As A Self-Leadership Strategy In Social Entrepreneurs

Social entrepreneurs actively create and apply business and communication strategies to support societal causes. They face many leadership and logistics challenges including the need to balance simultaneously mission advocacy and enterprise administration. This qualitative, phenomenological study examines how social entrepreneurs experience intrapersonal communication, conversations within oneself, as a self-leadership strategy that impacts mission and constituents. Within the vast intrapersonal communication field, this study specifically explored the concepts of self-talk, inner voice and inner dialogue, as well as imagined interactions, where conversations are rehearsed or replayed for perceived strategic advantage. The literature examined showed intrapersonal communication, self-leadership and social entrepreneurship all to be in states of their own development, which offered opportunity for the study to contribute to the evolving knowledge in each of these areas. To understand this phenomenon, face-to-face, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 social entrepreneur participants. Major findings included descriptions of the experience of intrapersonal communication for strategy and planning; reflection and learning opportunities; specific communication scenario preparation and post-analysis; and self-regulation. This study provides valuable insight to social entrepreneurs, signifying intrapersonal communication as a powerful tool to engage in their respective leadership roles

Vertex-Coloring with Star-Defects

Defective coloring is a variant of traditional vertex-coloring, according to which adjacent vertices are allowed to have the same color, as long as the monochromatic components induced by the corresponding edges have a certain structure. Due to its important applications, as for example in the bipartisation of graphs, this type of coloring has been extensively studied, mainly with respect to the size, degree, and acyclicity of the monochromatic components. In this paper we focus on defective colorings in which the monochromatic components are acyclic and have small diameter, namely, they form stars. For outerplanar graphs, we give a linear-time algorithm to decide if such a defective coloring exists with two colors and, in the positive case, to construct one. Also, we prove that an outerpath (i.e., an outerplanar graph whose weak-dual is a path) always admits such a two-coloring. Finally, we present NP-completeness results for non-planar and planar graphs of bounded degree for the cases of two and three colors

Does perception of automation undermine pro-environmental behaviour? Findings from three everyday settings

The global deployment of technology to aid mitigation of climate change has great potential but the realisation of much of this potential depends on behavioural response. A culturally pervasive reliance on and belief in technology raises the risk that dependence on technology will hamper human actions of mitigation. Theory suggests that ‘green’ behaviour may be undermined by automated technology but empirical investigation has been lacking. We examined the effect of the prospect of automation on three everyday behaviours with environmental impact. Based on evidence from observational and experimental studies, we demonstrated that the prospect of automation can undermine even simple actions for sustainability. Further, we examined the process by which automated technology influences behaviour and suggest that automation may impair personal responsibility for action

Ydj1 governs fungal morphogenesis and stress response, and facilitates mitochondrial protein import via Mas1 and Mas2

We thank Zhen-Yuan Lin for help in the preparation of the AP-MS samples, and Cathy Collins for technical assistance. MDL is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship (Wellcome Trust 096072), LEC is supported by a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Infectious Disease and by Cana-dian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Grants MOP-119520 and MOP-86452. OK is supported by National Insti-tutes of Health grant 5R01GM108975. A-CG is supported by a CIHR Foundation Grant (FDN143301), Genome Cana-da Genomics Innovation Network (GIN) Node and Tech-nical Development Grants, and a Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics. J-PL was supported by a TD Bank Health Research Fellowship at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and by a Scholarship for the Next Gen-eration of Scientists from the Cancer Research Society. JLX is supported by a CIHR – Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship. The funding agencies had no role in the study design, data collection and inter-pretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hsp21potentiates antifungal drug tolerance in Candida albicans

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hsp90 governs dispersion and drug resistance of fungal biofilms

Fungal biofilms are a major cause of human mortality and are recalcitrant to most treatments due to intrinsic drug resistance. These complex communities of multiple cell types form on indwelling medical devices and their eradication often requires surgical removal of infected devices. Here we implicate the molecular chaperone Hsp90 as a key regulator of biofilm dispersion and drug resistance. We previously established that in the leading human fungal pathogen, Candida albicans, Hsp90 enables the emergence and maintenance of drug resistance in planktonic conditions by stabilizing the protein phosphatase calcineurin and MAPK Mkc1. Hsp90 also regulates temperature-dependent C. albicans morphogenesis through repression of cAMP-PKA signalling. Here we demonstrate that genetic depletion of Hsp90 reduced C. albicans biofilm growth and maturation in vitro and impaired dispersal of biofilm cells. Further, compromising Hsp90 function in vitro abrogated resistance of C. albicans biofilms to the most widely deployed class of antifungal drugs, the azoles. Depletion of Hsp90 led to reduction of calcineurin and Mkc1 in planktonic but not biofilm conditions, suggesting that Hsp90 regulates drug resistance through different mechanisms in these distinct cellular states. Reduction of Hsp90 levels led to a marked decrease in matrix glucan levels, providing a compelling mechanism through which Hsp90 might regulate biofilm azole resistance. Impairment of Hsp90 function genetically or pharmacologically transformed fluconazole from ineffectual to highly effective in eradicating biofilms in a rat venous catheter infection model. Finally, inhibition of Hsp90 reduced resistance of biofilms of the most lethal mould, Aspergillus fumigatus, to the newest class of antifungals to reach the clinic, the echinocandins. Thus, we establish a novel mechanism regulating biofilm drug resistance and dispersion and that targeting Hsp90 provides a much-needed strategy for improving clinical outcome in the treatment of biofilm infections

The Role of Long Distance Dispersal Versus Local Retention in Replenishing Marine Populations

Early models and evidence from genetics suggested that long distance dispersal of larvae is likely a common event leading to considerable population connectivity among distant populations. However, recent evidence strongly suggests that local retention is more the rule, and that long distance transport is likely insufficient to sustain marine populations over demographic timescales. We build on earlier model results to examine the probability of larval dispersal to downstream islands within different regions of the Caribbean at varying distances from source populations. Through repeated runs of an ocean circulation model (MICOM), coupled with a random flight model estimating larval sub-grid turbulent motion, we estimate the likelihood of particular circulation events transporting large numbers of larvae to within 9km radii of downstream populations, as well as account for total accumulations of larvae over each year. Further, we incorporate realistic larval behavior and mortality estimates and production variability into our models. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that marine populations must rely on mechanisms enhancing self-recruitment rather than depend on distant ‘source’ populations