Charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders’ impact on creative performance: Person-supervisor, supervisor-goal, and person-goal fit

Research examining the compatibility between people and their work environment has been prevalent in the work behavior literature. Despite its rich history, questions remain as to the factors influencing, and the outcomes of, the fit between subordinates, supervisors, and goals. In the present effort, undergraduates completed a creative problem-solving task with the resulting plans being appraised for quality, originality, elegance, affective reaction, and specificity. Three manipulations were used: 1) task instructions framed in the style of a charismatic, ideological, or pragmatic (CIP) leader, 2) presentation of a creativity or performance goal, and 3) description of a crisis or non-crisis situation. Moreover, participants’ CIP leadership style preference was measured. It was found that certain pairings of leadership style, followers’ leader preference, goal type and crisis situation influenced creative problem-solving performance. The implications of these observations for understanding CIP leadership as well as person-supervisor, supervisor-goal, and person-goal fit are discussed

A Small Molecule that Induces Intrinsic Pathway Apoptosis with Unparalleled Speed

Apoptosis is generally believed to be a process thatrequires several hours, in contrast to non-programmed forms of cell death that can occur in minutes. Our findings challenge the time-consuming nature of apoptosis as we describe the discovery and characterization of a small molecule, named Raptinal, which initiates intrinsic pathway caspase-dependent apoptosis within minutes in multiple cell lines. Comparison to a mechanistically diverse panel of apoptotic stimuli reveals that Raptinal-induced apoptosis proceeds with unparalleled speed. The rapid phenotype enabled identification of the criticalroles of mitochondrial voltage-dependent anion channel function, mitochondrial membrane potential/coupled respiration, and mitochondrial complex I, III, and IV function for apoptosis induction. Use of Raptinal in whole organisms demonstrates its utility for studying apoptosis invivo for a variety of applications. Overall, rapid inducers of apoptosis are powerful tools that will be used in a variety of settings to generate further insight into the apoptotic machinery. Palchaudhuri etal. describe the discovery of a small molecule called "Raptinal" that induces unusually rapid apoptotic cell death via the intrinsic pathway. Their work describes the utility of Raptinal as a tool for apoptosis induction relative to other available small molecules

Perfluorocarbon Particle Size Influences Magnetic Resonance Signal and Immunological Properties of Dendritic Cells

The development of cellular tracking by fluorine (19F) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has introduced a number of advantages for following immune cell therapies in vivo. These include improved signal selectivity and a possibility to correlate cells labeled with fluorine-rich particles with conventional anatomic proton (1H) imaging. While the optimization of the cellular labeling method is clearly important, the impact of labeling on cellular dynamics should be kept in mind. We show by 19F MR spectroscopy (MRS) that the efficiency in labeling cells of the murine immune system (dendritic cells) by perfluoro-15-crown-5-ether (PFCE) particles increases with increasing particle size (560>365>245>130 nm). Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen presenting cells and with respect to impact of PFCE particles on DC function, we observed that markers of maturation for these cells (CD80, CD86) were also significantly elevated following labeling with larger PFCE particles (560 nm). When labeled with these larger particles that also gave an optimal signal in MRS, DC presented whole antigen more robustly to CD8+ T cells than control cells. Our data suggest that increasing particle size is one important feature for optimizing cell labeling by PFCE particles, but may also present possible pitfalls such as alteration of the immunological status of these cells. Therefore depending on the clinical scenario in which the 19F-labeled cellular vaccines will be applied (cancer, autoimmune disease, transplantation), it will be interesting to monitor the fate of these cells in vivo in the relevant preclinical mouse models

Development of a System for Anatomical Landmarks Localization using Ultrasonic Signals

review of the current protocols and techniques for the anthropometric measurements and postural assessment for wheelchair users and individuals with severe musculoskeletal problems was given. It was concluded that both contact and non contact methods have a number of significant limitations including time consuming measurement procedure, high cost and risk of excessive exposure to radiation. Many current approaches do not enable clinicians to accurately record and analyze the patient’s musculoskeletal configuration. The challenge still remains to combine the body shape data with the precise identification and localization of anatomical landmarks for postural assessment. To address the need for easy to use, low cost, reliable measurement of anatomical landmarks ultrasound measurement system has been proposed. The main elements of the system are: ultrasound transmitters, receiver, digital-analog converter, signal conditioning equipment and laptop executing the signal processing algorithm. The prototype of the system was build and tested. The preliminary measurements of ultrasonic signals were realized and demonstrated the potential for this technique to be used in anthropometric and postural assessments in the future.“© © 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Selective Small Molecule Inhibition of Poly(ADP-Ribose) Glycohydrolase (PARG)

The poly­(ADP-ribose) (PAR) post-translational modification is essential for diverse cellular functions, including regulation of transcription, response to DNA damage, and mitosis. Cellular PAR is predominantly synthesized by the enzyme poly­(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1). PARP-1 is a critical node in the DNA damage response pathway, and multiple potent PARP-1 inhibitors have been described, some of which show considerable promise in the clinic for the treatment of certain cancers. Cellular PAR is efficiently degraded by poly­(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase (PARG), an enzyme for which no potent, readily accessible, and specific inhibitors exist. Herein we report the discovery of small molecules that effectively inhibit PARG <i>in vitro</i> and in cellular lysates. These potent PARG inhibitors can be produced in two chemical steps from commercial starting materials and have complete specificity for PARG over the other known PAR glycohydrolase (ADP-ribosylhydrolase 3, ARH3) and over PARP-1 and thus will be useful tools for studying the biochemistry of PAR signaling