Critical learning in the transition from professional specialist to senior executive

Many organisations depend heavily on having professional employees become capable leaders, but very little research has been done to ask leaders themselves about the learning involved in this very significant change of roles. In this study, a group of senior executives in large public and private sector organisations identified the most important leadership related insights and skills they had acquired as they made the transition from professional specialist to senior leader. Six male and six female executives each participated in approximately three hours of in-depth interviewing during which they shared narratives describing the events and experiences that had led to these key areas of learning. Participants began their careers in fields as diverse as police service, engineering, corporate law, nursing, economics and teaching, and they worked in organisations ranging from hospitals, to universities, to government agencies, to a variety of large corporations. Even with this notable diversity, and with the freedom to speak without prompting, there was substantial common ground in the insights and skills they determined to be most important to their performance as leaders, and there were shared patterns in the types of learning experiences they described. At the same time, these executives were distinctly different individuals with unique backgrounds, and it was notable that they had each made sense of leadership in their own personal way. Their career stories also revealed that becoming a senior leader involved three types of profound personal change. Implications and recommendations for further research and for leadership development are discussed

Electron localisation in static and time-dependent one-dimensional model systems

Electron localization is the tendency of an electron in a many-body system to exclude other electrons from its vicinity. Using a new natural measure of localization based on the exact manyelectron wavefunction, we find that localization can vary considerably between different ground-state systems, and can also be strongly disrupted, as a function of time, when a system is driven by an applied electric field. We use our new measure to assess the well-known electron localization function (ELF), both in its approximate single-particle form (often applied within density-functional theory) and its full many-particle form. The full ELF always gives an excellent description of localization, but the approximate ELF fails in time-dependent situations, even when the exact Kohn-Sham orbitals are employed.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Dimension-adaptive bounds on compressive FLD Classification

Efficient dimensionality reduction by random projections (RP) gains popularity, hence the learning guarantees achievable in RP spaces are of great interest. In finite dimensional setting, it has been shown for the compressive Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) classifier that forgood generalisation the required target dimension grows only as the log of the number of classes and is not adversely affected by the number of projected data points. However these bounds depend on the dimensionality d of the original data space. In this paper we give further guarantees that remove d from the bounds under certain conditions of regularity on the data density structure. In particular, if the data density does not fill the ambient space then the error of compressive FLD is independent of the ambient dimension and depends only on a notion of ‘intrinsic dimension'

Extended conjugated microporous polymers for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water

Conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) have been used as photocatalysts for hydrogen production from water in the presence of a sacrificial electron donor. The relative importance of the linker geometry, the co-monomer linker length, and the degree of planarisation were studied with respect to the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate

Serum cholinesterases are differentially regulated in normal and dystrophin-deficient mutant mice

The cholinesterases, acetylcholinesterase (AChE), and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) (pseudocholinesterase), are abundant in the nervous system and in other tissues. The role of AChE in terminating transmitter action in the peripheral and central nervous system is well understood. However, both knowledge of the function(s) of the cholinesterases in serum, and of their metabolic and endocrine regulation under normal and pathological conditions, is limited. This study investigates AChE and BChE in sera of dystrophin-deficient mdx mutant mice, an animal model for the human Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and in control healthy mice. The data show systematic and differential variations in the concentrations of both enzymes in the sera, and specific changes dictated by alteration of hormonal balance in both healthy and dystrophic mice. While AChE in mdx-sera is elevated, BChE is markedly diminished, resulting in an overall cholinesterase decrease compared to sera of healthy controls. The androgen testosterone (T) is a negative modulator of BChE, but not of AChE, in male mouse sera. T-removal elevated both BChE activity and the BChE/AChE ratio in mdx male sera to values resembling those in healthy control male mice. Mechanisms of regulation of the circulating cholinesterases and their impairment in the dystrophic mice are suggested, and clinical implications for diagnosis and treatment are considered

Novel cruzain inhibitors for the treatment of Chagas' disease.

The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas' disease, affects millions of individuals and continues to be an important global health concern. The poor efficacy and unfavorable side effects of current treatments necessitate novel therapeutics. Cruzain, the major cysteine protease of T. cruzi, is one potential novel target. Recent advances in a class of vinyl sulfone inhibitors are encouraging; however, as most potential therapeutics fail in clinical trials and both disease progression and resistance call for combination therapy with several drugs, the identification of additional classes of inhibitory molecules is essential. Using an exhaustive virtual-screening and experimental validation approach, we identify several additional small-molecule cruzain inhibitors. Further optimization of these chemical scaffolds could lead to the development of novel drugs useful in the treatment of Chagas' disease

Efficient Hole Trapping in Carbon Dot/Oxygen-Modified Carbon Nitride Heterojunction Photocatalysts for Enhanced Methanol Production from CO₂ under Neutral Conditions

Artificial photosynthesis of alcohols from CO 2 is a promising route to provide sustainable fuels. The performance is still unsatisfactory mainly due to the rapid charge relaxation compared to the sluggish photoreactions and the oxidation of alcohol products. Here, we demonstrate that CO 2 is reduced to methanol with 100% selectivity using water as the only electron donor on a carbon nitride-like polymer (FAT) decorated with carbon dots. The quantum efficiency of 5.9% (λ = 420 nm) is 300% higher than the previously reported carbon nitride junction. Using transient absorption spectroscopy, we observed that holes in FAT can be extracted by the carbon dots with nearly 75% efficiency before they become unreactive by trapping. Extraction of holes resulted in a greater density of photoelectrons, indicative of reduced recombination of shorter-lived reactive electrons. This work offers a unique strategy to promote photocatalysis by increasing the amount of reactive photogenerated charges via structure engineering and extraction before energy losses by deep trapping

The kinetics of metal oxide photoanodesfrom charge generation to catalysis

Generating charge carriers with lifetimes long enough to drive catalysis is a critical aspect for both photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic systems and a key determinant of their efficiency. This review addresses the charge carrier dynamics underlying the performance of metal oxides as photoanodes and their ability to drive photoelectrochemical water oxidation, alongside wider comparison with metal oxide function in photocatalytic and electrocatalytic systems. We start by highlighting the disparity between the ps–ns lifetimes of electron and holes photoexcited in bulk metal oxides versus the ms –s timescale of water oxidation catalysis. We go onto review recent literature of the dominant kinetic processes determining photoanode performance, namely charge generation, polaron formation and charge trapping, bulk and surface recombination, charge separation and extraction, and finally the kinetics of water oxidation catalysis. With each topic, we review current understanding and note areas of remaining uncertainty or controversy. We discuss the potential for material selection and examine approaches such as doping, nanostructuring, junction formation and/or co-catalyst deposition to enhance performance. Critically, we examine how such performance enhancements can be understood from analyses of carrier dynamics and propose design guidelines for further material or device optimisation

AutoClickChem: Click Chemistry in Silico

Academic researchers and many in industry often lack the financial resources available to scientists working in “big pharma.” High costs include those associated with high-throughput screening and chemical synthesis. In order to address these challenges, many researchers have in part turned to alternate methodologies. Virtual screening, for example, often substitutes for high-throughput screening, and click chemistry ensures that chemical synthesis is fast, cheap, and comparatively easy. Though both in silico screening and click chemistry seek to make drug discovery more feasible, it is not yet routine to couple these two methodologies. We here present a novel computer algorithm, called AutoClickChem, capable of performing many click-chemistry reactions in silico. AutoClickChem can be used to produce large combinatorial libraries of compound models for use in virtual screens. As the compounds of these libraries are constructed according to the reactions of click chemistry, they can be easily synthesized for subsequent testing in biochemical assays. Additionally, in silico modeling of click-chemistry products may prove useful in rational drug design and drug optimization. AutoClickChem is based on the pymolecule toolbox, a framework that may facilitate the development of future python-based programs that require the manipulation of molecular models. Both the pymolecule toolbox and AutoClickChem are released under the GNU General Public License version 3 and are available for download from http://autoclickchem.ucsd.edu