Recipe for Success: Behavioral Ingredients for Superior Performing Leaders

The aviation and aerospace business is a complex adaptive system that includes emerging technologies, competitors, government policies, cost demands, globalization, and talent constraints. To effectively lead in the chaos of constant demands and disruptive and unpredictable external environments, having deep and broad functional expertise is not enough. Superior performing leaders require further broadening and deepening of selected behavioral competencies in order to succeed (Smith, 2000). Particular to aviation and aerospace, understanding the types of leaders needed to be successful is especially important since baby boomer employees will soon retire and the middle managers that will likely replace them lack the required behaviors. Worsening this is a scarcity of talent available. Velocci (2009) revealed that how organizations respond to this would shape the future of the industry’s landscape. McKee, Boyatzis, & Johnson (2008) argued that behavioral competencies, not IQ or technical experience, are the most important factors in distinguishing great leadership. Findings from an unprecedented study of 112 leaders in eight aviation and aerospace organizations will shed light on the specific behavioral competencies that differentiate superior performing leaders and serves to fill a tremendous void with respect to aviation and aerospace human capital. This work contributes by supporting organizations to more effectively select, develop, and promote those aviation and aerospace leaders that can positively affect organizational performance. As such, organizations can experience improved candidate selections, enhanced professional development and promotion decisions, increased employee engagement and productivity, as well as decreased turnover

MEMORYSCAPES: PLACE, MOBILITY, AND MEMORY IN THE POST-DICATORIAL SOUTHERN CONE

The urban landscapes of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay lay bare the markings of these countries‘ turbulent political and economic pasts, their transition to democracy, and diverse efforts to preserve memory. Claudia Feld‘s observation that these countries have experienced a \u27memory boom‘—not a deficit—in recent years manifests itself as much culturally and politically as it does spatially, through the creation of memorials, memory parks, museums, and memory-related performances and discourses. Along these same lines, narratives of memory recur among artistic and cultural works of the post-dictatorial Southern Cone—not exclusively among memorials and other designated sites of recollection, but along the everyday corridors and causeways of some of South America‘s most populous cities, and rather unexpectedly, among seemingly generic sites of consumerism and transit. In fact, my reading of literary and cinematic works by Alberto Fuguet, Sergio Chejfec, Ignacio Agüero, and Fabián Bielinsky, and my examination of Uruguay‘s Punta Carretas Shopping Center, suggests that memory has not been easily corralled into designated sites nor erased through modern spaces and lifestyles; instead, each of the works analyzed in this study reveals that palimpsests of memory can appear often and, in many cases, spontaneously among all angles of the cityscape

The Relationship Between Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, Emotional Well-Being and Depression Among Lakota/Dakota Sioux Adolescents

Despite conceptual support linking ethnic identity and psychological adjustment among Native Americans, empirical research examining this relationship remains limited. In light of recent developments in the area of ethnic identity research, including alternative conceptual models, improved methodologies, and more sophisticated measures, this study examined the relationship between ethnic identity, self-esteem, emotional well-being, and depression among Native American reservation youth. The relationship between the predictor variables of American Indian ethnic identity, White-American identity and bicultural identity, and the criterion measures of self-esteem, emotional well-being, and depression were examined for 137 Lakota/Dakota Sioux reservation youth. Participants completed surveys including the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM; Phinney, 1992) and the Acculturation Questionnaire-Adolescent Version (AQA; Doerner, 1995) as well as demographic information and measures of psychological health. Findings from a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that American Indian ethnic identification, White American identification, as well as the interaction of these scores, did not significantly contribute to the variance for any of the criterion variables above that accounted for by age and gender. For the MEIM and OGA, the MEIM accounted for a significant amount of variance for both the criterion variables of self-esteem and emotional well-being, but did not significantly contribute any unique variance for depression. The OGA, or the interaction term (MEIM X OGA), did not significantly contributed any unique variance for any of the criterion variables. Results support adequate psychometric properties for both measures of ethnic identity with Lakota/Dakota Sioux youth. Ethnic identity appears to be a multifaceted construct. The results support the complex relationship between age, gender and ethnic identity, in contributing to the psychological adjustment for American Indian youth. Sample and methodological limitations of the current study, as well as implications and directions for future research are discussed. Finally, considerations regarding measures of psychological functioning as well as the unique challenges of cross-cultural research are reviewed

A separability criterion for density operators

We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a mixed quantum mechanical state to be separable. The criterion is formulated as a boundedness condition in terms of the greatest cross norm on the tensor product of trace class operators.Comment: REVTeX, 5 page

Some Properties of the Computable Cross Norm Criterion for Separability

The computable cross norm (CCN) criterion is a new powerful analytical and computable separability criterion for bipartite quantum states, that is also known to systematically detect bound entanglement. In certain aspects this criterion complements the well-known Peres positive partial transpose (PPT) criterion. In the present paper we study important analytical properties of the CCN criterion. We show that in contrast to the PPT criterion it is not sufficient in dimension 2 x 2. In higher dimensions we prove theorems connecting the fidelity of a quantum state with the CCN criterion. We also analyze the behaviour of the CCN criterion under local operations and identify the operations that leave it invariant. It turns out that the CCN criterion is in general not invariant under local operations.Comment: 7 pages; accepted by Physical Review A; error in Appendix B correcte

Alternatively spliced exons of the beta tropomyosin gene exhibit different affinities for F-actin and effects with nonmuscle caldesmon

The rat beta-tropomyosin (TM) gene expresses two isoforms via alternative RNA splicing, namely skeletal muscle beta-TM and fibroblast TM-1. The latter is also expressed in smooth muscle where it corresponds to smooth muscle beta-TM. Skeletal muscle beta-TM contains exons 7 and 10, whereas exons 6 and 11 are used in fibroblasts and smooth muscle. In order to study the properties of the alternatively spliced proteins, recombinant TMs derived from bacterial and insect cell expression systems were produced, including the normal beta gene products, fibroblast TM-1 and beta skeletal muscle TM, two carboxy-terminal chimeric TMs, TM-6/10 and TM-7/11, as well as a carboxyl-truncated version of each, TM-6Cla and TM-7Cla. The purified TM isoforms were used in actin filament association studies. The apparent TM association constants (Ka) were taken as the free concentration at half saturation and were found to be 6 microM for beta Sk TM, 8.5 for TM-6/10, 25 microM for TM-1, and 30 microM for TM-7/11 at an F-actin concentration of 42 microM. For the truncated TMs, the values determined were higher still but the binding was not carried out to full saturation. Isoforms were also produced using the baculovirus-insect cell system which produces proteins with an acetylated amino terminus as is normally found in vivo. This modification significantly enhanced the F-actin association of TM-1 but not the beta skeletal TM or the other isoforms. Fibroblast TM-2 or TM-3, both products of the alpha gene, enhanced the affinity of TM-1 for F-actin, demonstrating different isoforms can act cooperatively on binding to actin. This effect was not detected with the other expressed beta gene products. The presence of 83 kDa nonmuscle caldesmon was found to enhance the binding of TM-1 for F-actin. This effect was dependent on the presence of both exons 6 and 11, as caldesmon had little effect on the other beta gene products. Collectively these results demonstrate TMs differ in their affinity for F-actin, which can be altered by other TMs or actin-binding proteins. The beta tropomyosin isoforms were fluorescently-tagged and microinjected into cultured cells to study their in vivo localization where it was found that each of the full-length TMs bound to microfilaments but, at the light microscopy level, the isoforms were not differentially localized in these fibroblasts

Adversity: Its Affect on the Resilience of Female Pilots

Women are one of the solutions to alleviating the pending pilot shortage. Becoming a pilot needs to appeal to women. Resilience plays an important role in determining whether women in male-dominated career fields will pursue or abandon their careers. The pilot profession is dominated by masculine beliefs, values and perceptions creating an organizational culture adverse and challenging to women. The study objective was to explore the influence of adversity on female pilots and its effect on resiliency. In our sample of 1,499 female pilots, we found lower resiliency levels as compared to a general U.S. sample. Additionally, statistically significant differences in resilience were revealed based on age, years of experience, and type of pilot, signifying characteristics can influence resilience. The findings indicate a potential influence of the adversity and challenges faced by women in aviation on resilience, inhibiting women’s success in aviation. Efforts to increase female pilots in this male-dominated career will not improve conditions for women’s careers. The lower resilience among female pilots supports the need for further work in shifting organizational cultures and working conditions to increase and retain them. This further informs the need for the aviation industry to address many latent issues that provide disincentives to women becoming and remaining pilots. The scarcity of female pilots entering and remaining in the profession deprives the industry of the pilots it desperately needs and talent that brings equally valued and diverse skills to the ranks of the professional pilot

Classicality in discrete Wigner functions

Gibbons et al. [Phys. Rev. A 70, 062101(2004)] have recently defined a class of discrete Wigner functions W to represent quantum states in a Hilbert space with finite dimension. We show that the only pure states having non-negative W for all such functions are stabilizer states, as conjectured by one of us [Phys. Rev. A 71, 042302 (2005)]. We also show that the unitaries preserving non-negativity of W for all definitions of W form a subgroup of the Clifford group. This means pure states with non-negative W and their associated unitary dynamics are classical in the sense of admitting an efficient classical simulation scheme using the stabilizer formalism.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Laboratory Notes From Behavioral Pharmacologists and Trainees: Considerations for the Discipline

In several laboratory meetings, we discussed the challenges that face trainees in behavioral pharmacology. Major concerns, such as a difficult funding climate and limited academic job prospects were discussed at first. However, we decided to concentrate on ways to meet these challenges; versus focusing on negatives and listing gripes. Within this more constructive framework, we identified the importance of broadening training to aligned areas to enhance the capacity of behavioral pharmacologists to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams. With increased breadth of training comes the concern for a balance that does not cheat trainees out of the depth of training also needed for success. We believe that behavioral pharmacologists trained in this manner will be ideally positioned to be leaders of these translational research teams. Related to the breadth and depth of training is the recent concerns over replicability and reproducibility of published research. Behavioral pharmacologists, with the rigors of training in behavioral analysis and experimental design, can be at the forefront of this conversation. This will be especially true if current training is reinforced with additional experience in the use of cutting-edge statistical tools that address the complex experimental designs and large data sets that emerge from modern multidisciplinary collaborations. Finally, communicating the import and potential societal impact of our research to legislators, other scientists, educators, school children, neighbors, and acquaintances is needed to ensure that our field thrives. In closing, the process of explicitly discussing the challenges and potential solutions with current trainees will enhance their mentoring and training