The Role of Effective Leadership in Doing More With Less in Public Universities

Public universities in most developed countries are facing increasing pressure to "do more with less". Many have invariably come to terms with reality by repeatedly restructuring and downsizing to stay lean and survive. Effective leadership to see through drastic organizational changes is a must, whilst resistance to change is also one thing management needs to face squarely in the course of change. This paper offers some provocative thoughts to university management in gaining synergistic effect by the dual priming of Transformational Leadership and an Employee-Centred Resistance to Change Perspective to afford the "doing more with less"

Kama muta: conceptualizing and measuring the experience of being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages

English-speakers sometimes say that they feel moved to tears, emotionally touched, stirred, or that something warmed their heart; other languages use similar passive contact metaphors to refer to an affective state. We propose and measure the concept of kama muta to understand experiences often given these and other labels. Do the same experiences evoke the same kama muta emotion across nations and languages? We conducted studies in 19 different countries, five continents, 15 languages, with a total of 3542 participants. We tested the construct while validating a comprehensive scale to measure the appraisals, valence, bodily sensations, motivation, and lexical labels posited to characterize kama muta. Our results are congruent with theory and previous findings showing that kama muta is a distinct positive social relational emotion that is evoked by experiencing or observing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. It is commonly accompanied by a warm feeling in the chest, moist eyes or tears, chills or piloerection, feeling choked up or having a lump in the throat, buoyancy and exhilaration. It motivates affective devotion and moral commitment to communal sharing. While we observed some variations across cultures, these five facets of kama muta are highly correlated in every sample, supporting the validity of the construct and the measure.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Advancing brain barriers RNA sequencing: guidelines from experimental design to publication

Background: RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) in its varied forms has become an indispensable tool for analyzing differential gene expression and thus characterization of specific tissues. Aiming to understand the brain barriers genetic signature, RNA seq has also been introduced in brain barriers research. This has led to availability of both, bulk and single-cell RNA-Seq datasets over the last few years. If appropriately performed, the RNA-Seq studies provide powerful datasets that allow for significant deepening of knowledge on the molecular mechanisms that establish the brain barriers. However, RNA-Seq studies comprise complex workflows that require to consider many options and variables before, during and after the proper sequencing process.Main body: In the current manuscript, we build on the interdisciplinary experience of the European PhD Training Network BtRAIN (https://www.btrain-2020.eu/) where bioinformaticians and brain barriers researchers collaborated to analyze and establish RNA-Seq datasets on vertebrate brain barriers. The obstacles BtRAIN has identified in this process have been integrated into the present manuscript. It provides guidelines along the entire workflow of brain barriers RNA-Seq studies starting from the overall experimental design to interpretation of results. Focusing on the vertebrate endothelial blood–brain barrier (BBB) and epithelial blood-cerebrospinal-fluid barrier (BCSFB) of the choroid plexus, we provide a step-by-step description of the workflow, highlighting the decisions to be made at each step of the workflow and explaining the strengths and weaknesses of individual choices made. Finally, we propose recommendations for accurate data interpretation and on the information to be included into a publication to ensure appropriate accessibility of the data and reproducibility of the observations by the scientific community.Conclusion: Next generation transcriptomic profiling of the brain barriers provides a novel resource for understanding the development, function and pathology of these barrier cells, which is essential for understanding CNS homeostasis and disease. Continuous advancement and sophistication of RNA-Seq will require interdisciplinary approaches between brain barrier researchers and bioinformaticians as successfully performed in BtRAIN. The present guidelines are built on the BtRAIN interdisciplinary experience and aim to facilitate collaboration of brain barriers researchers with bioinformaticians to advance RNA-Seq study design in the brain barriers community

The flair of the resistance to change: an employee-centered perspective

Transformational changes to "doing more with less" in organizations have been rapid, recurrent, and structural; and many failures in these changes are due to employees' resistance. In this paper, we develop theoretical model to explain how the nature and characteristics of employee's resistance to "doing more with less" organizational change can be managed to embed negative resistance into positive pursuit of organizational success

The flair of the resistance to change: an employee-centered perspective

Transformational changes to "doing more with less" in organizations have been rapid, recurrent, and structural; and many failures in these changes are due to employees' resistance. In this paper, we develop theoretical model to explain how the nature and characteristics of employee's resistance to "doing more with less" organizational change can be managed to embed negative resistance into positive pursuit of organizational success

The Role of Effective Leadership in Doing More With Less in Public Universities

Public universities in most developed countries are facing increasing pressure to "do more with less". Many have invariably come to terms with reality by repeatedly restructuring and downsizing to stay lean and survive. Effective leadership to see through drastic organizational changes is a must, whilst resistance to change is also one thing management needs to face squarely in the course of change. This paper offers some provocative thoughts to university management in gaining synergistic effect by the dual priming of Transformational Leadership and an Employee-Centred Resistance to Change Perspective to afford the "doing more with less"

Australian Forex Market Analysis Using Connectionist Models

The need for intelligent monitoring systems has become a necessity to keep track of the complex forex market. The forex market is difficult to understand by an average individual. However, once the market is broken down into simple terms, the average individual can begin to understand the foreign exchange market and use it as a financial instrument for future investing. This paper is an attempt to compare the performance of a TakagiSugeno type neuro-fuzzy system and a feed forward neural network trained using the scaled conjugate gradient algorithm to predict the average monthly forex rates. The exchange values of Australian dollar are considered with respect to US dollar, Singapore dollar, New Zealand dollar, Japanese yen and United Kingdom pound. The connectionist models were trained using 70% of the data and remaining was used for testing and validation purposes. It is observed that the proposed connectionist models were able to predict the average forex rates one month ahead accurately. Experiment results also reveal that neuro-fuzzy technique performed better than the neural network