A Curricular Reform Viewed Through Bolman and Deal’s Organizational Frames

Professions exist to serve the needs of society, communities and, in the case of the dental profession, patients. Academic dental institutions strive to help meet these needs by educating and developing future practitioners, educators, researchers, and citizen leaders who serve the community and shape the changing environment in which they practice and provide care. The American Dental Association Commission on Change and Innovation affirms, “If dental educators are to meet these purposes, change and innovation in dental education must be responsive to evolving societal needs, practice patterns, scientific developments, and economic conditions”(Haden, et al., 2006). Guiding any institution through such authentic reform requires a number of strategies. Lee Bolman and Terrance Deal suggest four organizational constructs, or frames, through which to view a complex organization: Structural, Human Resource, Political and Symbolic (Bolman and Deal, 1997).“Like maps, frames are both windows on a territory and tools for navigation” (Bolman and Deal, 1997). This reflective case study examines a major curricular reform initiative in a North American school of dentistry through Bolman and Deal’s organizational frames

A Curricular reform viewed through Bolman and Deal’s organizational frames

Professions exist to serve the needs of society, communities and, in the case of the dental profession, patients.  Academic dental institutions strive to help meet these needs by educating and developing future practitioners, educators, researchers, and citizen leaders who serve the community and shape the changing environment in which they practice and provide care. The American Dental Association Commission on Change and Innovation affirms, “If dental educators are to meet these purposes, change and innovation in dental education must be responsive to evolving societal needs, practice patterns, scientific developments, and economic conditions”(Haden, et al., 2006). Guiding any institution through such authentic reform requires a number of strategies. Lee Bolman and Terrance Deal suggest four organizational constructs, or frames, through which to view a complex organization:  Structural, Human Resource, Political and Symbolic (Bolman and Deal, 1997).“Like maps, frames are both windows on a territory and tools for navigation” (Bolman and Deal, 1997). This reflective case study examines a major curricular reform initiative in a North American school of dentistry through Bolman and Deal’s organizational frames

Photoelectrochemical properties of mesoporous NiOx deposited on technical FTO via nanopowder sintering in conventional and plasma atmospheres

Nanoporous nickel oxide (NiO x ) has been deposited with two different procedures of sintering (CS and RDS). Both samples display solid state oxidation at about 3.1 V vs Li+/Li. Upon sensitization of CS/RDS NiO x with erythrosine b (ERY), nickel oxide oxidation occurs at the same potential. Impedance spectroscopy revealed a higher charge transfer resistance for ERY-sensitized RDS NiO x with respect to sensitized CS NiO x . This was due to the chemisorption of a larger amount of ERY on RDS with respect to CS NiO x . Upon illumination the photoinduced charge transfer between ERY layer and NiO x could be observed only with oxidized CS. Photoelectrochemical effects of sensitized RDS NiO x were evidenced upon oxide reduction. With the addition of iodine RDS NiOx electrodes could give the reduction iodine → iodide in addition to the reduction of RDS NiO x . p-type dye sensitized solar cells were assembled with RDS NiO x photocathodes sensitized either by ERY or Fast Green. Resulting overall efficiencies ranged between 0.02 and 0.04 % upon irradiation with solar spectrum simulator (Iin : 0.1 W cm −2 )

Increased upconversion performance for thin film solar cells a trimolecular composition

Photochemical upconversion based on triplet triplet annihilation TTA UC is employed to enhance the short circuit currents generated by two varieties of thin amp; 64257;lm solar cells, a hydrogenated amorphous silicon a Si H solar cell and a dye sensitized solar cell DSC . TTA UC is exploited to harvest transmitted sub bandgap photons, combine their energies and re radiate upconverted photons back towards the solar cells. In the present study we employ a dual emitter TTA UC system which allows for signi amp; 64257;cantly improved UC quantum yields as compared to the previously used single emitter TTA systems. In doing so we achieve record photo current enhancement values for both the a Si H device and the DSC, surpassing 10 3 mA cm 2 sun 2 for the amp; 64257;rst time for a TTA UC system and marking a record for upconversion enhanced solar cells in general. We discuss pertinent challenges of the TTA UC technology which need to be addressed in order to achieve its viable device application

Investigation of a new bis(carboxylate)triazole-based anchoring ligand for dye-sensitised solar cell chromophore complexes

A novel anchoring ligand for dye-sensitised solar cell chromophoric complexes, 1-(2,2’-bipyrid-4-yl)-1,2,3-triazole-4,5-dicarboxylic acid (dctzbpy), is described. The new dye complexes [Ru(bpy)2(dctzbpy)][PF6]2 (AS16), [Ir(ppy)2(dctzbpy)][PF6] (AS17) and [Re(dctzbpy)(CO)3Cl] (AS18) were prepared in a two stage procedure with intermediate isolation of their diester analogues, AS16-Et2, AS17-Et2 and AS18-Et2 respectively. Electrochemical analysis of AS16-Et2, AS17-Et2 and AS18-Et2 reveal reduction potentials in the range -1.50 to -1.59 V (vs Fc+/Fc) which is cathodically shifted with respect to that of the model complex [Ru(bpy)2(dcbH2)]2+ (1) (Ered = -1.34 V, dcbH2 = 2,2’-bipyridyl-4,4’dicarboxylic acid). This therefore demonstrates that the LUMO of the complex is correctly positioned for favourable electron transfer into the TiO2 conduction band upon photoexcitation. The higher energy LUMOs for AS16 to AS18 and a larger HOMO-LUMO gap result in blue-shifted absorption spectra and hence reduced light harvesting efficiency relative to their dcbH2 analogues. Preliminary tests on TiO2 n-type and NiO p-type DSSCs have been carried out. In the cases of the Ir(III) and Re(I) based dyes AS17 and AS18 these show inferior performance to their dcbH2 analogues. However, the Ru(II) dye AS16 (η = 0.61 %) exhibits significantly greater efficiency than 1 (η = 0.1 %). In a p-type cell AS16 shows the highest photovoltaic efficiency (η = 0.028 %), almost three times that of cells incorporating the benchmark dye coumarin C343

Discovery and population genomics of structural variation in a songbird genus

Structural variation (SV) constitutes an important type of genetic mutations providing the raw material for evolution. Here, we uncover the genome-wide spectrum of intra- and interspecific SV segregating in natural populations of seven songbird species in the genus Corvus. Combining short-read (N = 127) and long-read re-sequencing (N = 31), as well as optical mapping (N = 16), we apply both assembly- and read mapping approaches to detect SV and characterize a total of 220,452 insertions, deletions and inversions. We exploit sampling across wide phylogenetic timescales to validate SV genotypes and assess the contribution of SV to evolutionary processes in an avian model of incipient speciation. We reveal an evolutionary young (~530,000 years) cis-acting 2.25-kb LTR retrotransposon insertion reducing expression of the NDP gene with consequences for premating isolation. Our results attest to the wealth and evolutionary significance of SV segregating in natural populations and highlight the need for reliable SV genotyping

Chromosome-level assembly of the water buffalo genome surpasses human and goat genomes in sequence contiguity

Rapid innovation in sequencing technologies and improvement in assembly algorithms have enabled the creation of highly contiguous mammalian genomes. Here we report a chromosome-level assembly of the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) genome using single-molecule sequencing and chromatin conformation capture data. PacBio Sequel reads, with a mean length of 11.5 kb, helped to resolve repetitive elements and generate sequence contiguity. All five B. bubalis sub-metacentric chromosomes were correctly scaffolded with centromeres spanned. Although the index animal was partly inbred, 58% of the genome was haplotype-phased by FALCON-Unzip. This new reference genome improves the contig N50 of the previous short-read based buffalo assembly more than a thousand-fold and contains only 383 gaps. It surpasses the human and goat references in sequence contiguity and facilitates the annotation of hard to assemble gene clusters such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)

Accurate detection of complex structural variations using single-molecule sequencing

Structural variations are the greatest source of genetic variation, but they remain poorly understood because of technological limitations. Single-molecule long-read sequencing has the potential to dramatically advance the field, although high error rates are a challenge with existing methods. Addressing this need, we introduce open-source methods for long-read alignment (NGMLR; https://github.com/philres/ngmlr ) and structural variant identification (Sniffles; https://github.com/fritzsedlazeck/Sniffles ) that provide unprecedented sensitivity and precision for variant detection, even in repeat-rich regions and for complex nested events that can have substantial effects on human health. In several long-read datasets, including healthy and cancerous human genomes, we discovered thousands of novel variants and categorized systematic errors in short-read approaches. NGMLR and Sniffles can automatically filter false events and operate on low-coverage data, thereby reducing the high costs that have hindered the application of long reads in clinical and research settings

Phased diploid genome assembly with single-molecule real-time sequencing

While genome assembly projects have been successful in many haploid and inbred species, the assembly of noninbred or rearranged heterozygous genomes remains a major challenge. To address this challenge, we introduce the open-source FALCON and FALCON-Unzip algorithms (https://github.com/PacificBiosciences/FALCON/) to assemble long-read sequencing data into highly accurate, contiguous, and correctly phased diploid genomes. We generate new reference sequences for heterozygous samples including an F1 hybrid of Arabidopsis thaliana, the widely cultivated Vitis vinifera cv. Cabernet Sauvignon, and the coral fungus Clavicorona pyxidata, samples that have challenged short-read assembly approaches. The FALCON-based assemblies are substantially more contiguous and complete than alternate short- or long-read approaches. The phased diploid assembly enabled the study of haplotype structure and heterozygosities between homologous chromosomes, including the identification of widespread heterozygous structural variation within coding sequences