“I Need That Week Off!”: An Experiential Exercise on Conflict and Negotiation

This article presents an experiential exercise designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop their knowledge of ways in which conflict may be managed (using the framework proposed by Thomas, 1976) and types of negotiation. Students form pairs and are presented with a scenario in which they have both requested the same week of vacation to attend events. Unfortunately, they are informed that they are unable to take the time off simultaneously. Participants are asked to discuss among themselves, using assigned modes of managing conflict, to determine how the time will be allocated. The target audience is composed of undergraduate students, who may be enrolled in any number of classes related to organizational behavior. To examine perceptions of the exercise, data were collected from a sample of 140 participants. Among the findings, 92.9% of respondents reported that they would recommend that instructors use the exercise in a similar course

A Focus on Engagement: Defining, Measuring, and Nurturing a Key Pillar of AACSB Standards

The 2013 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) Standards emphasize three “pillars” upon which schools accredited by the association must regularly demonstrate quality improvement, namely, impact, innovation, and engagement. Focusing on the last of these, our article examines the concept of engagement through both a content analysis of the 2013 AACSB Standards and an empirical study exploring different types of course-level engagement within an undergraduate business course (measured using the Student Course Engagement Questionnaire; Handelsman, Briggs, Sullivan, & Towler, 2005). The results of our content analysis of the 2013 AACSB Standards underscore the focus placed on engagement within the AACSB documentation. However, it is also noted that the definition of engagement within the AACSB Standards is somewhat vague. The findings of our empirical study (N = 142) suggest that students were engaged in the course and that three of the four types of engagement measured (skills, participation/interaction, and performance engagement) were positively correlated with final performance in the course

Metalanguage in L1 English-speaking 12-year-olds: which aspects of writing do they talk about?

Traditional psycholinguistic approaches to metalinguistic awareness in L1 learners elicit responses containing metalanguage that demonstrates metalinguistic awareness of pre-determined aspects of language knowledge. This paper, which takes a more ethnographic approach, demonstrates how pupils are able to engage their own focus of metalanguage when reflecting on their everyday learning activities involving written language. What is equally significant is what their metalanguage choices reveal about their understanding and application of written language concepts

Structural equation model testing and the quality of natural killer cell activity measurements

BACKGROUND: Browne et al. [Browne, MacCallum, Kim, Andersen, Glaser: When fit indices and residuals are incompatible. Psychol Methods 2002] employed a structural equation model of measurements of target cell lysing by natural killer cells as an example purportedly demonstrating that small but statistically significant ill model fit can be dismissed as "negligible from a practical point of view". METHODS: Reanalysis of the natural killer cell data reveals that the supposedly negligible ill fit obscured important, systematic, and substantial causal misspecifications. RESULTS: A clean-fitting structural equation model indicates that measurements employing higher natural-killer-cell to target-cell ratios are more strongly influenced by a progressively intrusive factor, whether or not the natural killer cell activity is activated by recombinant interferon γ (rIFN γ). The progressive influence may reflect independent rate limiting steps in cell recognition and attachment, spatial competition for cell attachment points, or the simultaneous lysings of single target cells by multiple natural killer cells. CONCLUSIONS: If the progressively influential factor is ultimately identified as a mere procedural impediment, the substantive conclusion will be that measurements of natural killer cell activity made at lower effector to target ratios are more valid. Alternatively, if the individual variations in the progressively influential factor are modifiable, this may presage a new therapeutic route to enhancing natural killer cell activity. The methodological conclusion is that, when using structural equation models, researchers should attend to significant model ill fit even if the degree of covariance ill fit is small, because small covariance residuals do not imply that the underlying model misspecifications are correspondingly small or inconsequential

Ozone loss derived from balloon-borne tracer measurements and the SLIMCAT CTM

Balloon-borne measurements of CFC-11 (on flights of the DIRAC in situ gas chromatograph and the DESCARTES grab sampler), ClO and O3 were made during the 1999/2000 winter as part of the SOLVE-THESEO 2000 campaign. Here we present the CFC-11 data from nine flights and compare them first with data from other instruments which flew during the campaign and then with the vertical distributions calculated by the SLIMCAT 3-D CTM. We calculate ozone loss inside the Arctic vortex between late January and early March using the relation between CFC-11 and O3 measured on the flights, the peak ozone loss (1200 ppbv) occurs in the 440–470 K region in early March in reasonable agreement with other published empirical estimates. There is also a good agreement between ozone losses derived from three independent balloon tracer data sets used here. The magnitude and vertical distribution of the loss derived from the measurements is in good agreement with the loss calculated from SLIMCAT over Kiruna for the same days

Stylasterid corals: a new paleotemperature archive

Stylasterids are a ubiquitous deep-sea coral taxon that build their skeletons from either calcite, aragonite, or both. Yet, robust geochemical proxy data from these corals are limited. In this study, 95 modern stylasterids, spanning a wide range of depths (63 to 2894 m) and ambient seawater temperatures (0 to 17 °C), were tested for their potential use as paleoceanographic archives. Stable oxygen and carbon isotopic composition (O and C) were measured from the main trunk of all specimens and five specimens were further sub-sampled to assess internal chemical variability. The isotope data show non-equilibrium precipitation from seawater for both O and C, with the growing tips of colonies yielding the isotopically lowest values. Overall, the calcitic corals showed lower isotope values for O and C than aragonitic specimens. Within the aragonite corals, we present a O:temperature calibration that exhibits a significant linear relationship with the equation Ocoral-seawater = −0.22(°C) + 3.33(±0.06) across a temperature range of 0 to 30 °C, using samples from this study and published data. This work highlights the potential application of stylasterid coral O data to reconstruct paleo seawater temperature

Prospectus, April 26, 1990

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1990/1012/thumbnail.jp

Interaction of Cannabis Use Disorder and Striatal Connectivity in Antipsychotic Treatment Response

Antipsychotic (AP) medications are the mainstay for the treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), but their efficacy is unpredictable and widely variable. Substantial efforts have been made to identify prognostic biomarkers that can be used to guide optimal prescription strategies for individual patients. Striatal regions involved in salience and reward processing are disrupted as a result of both SSD and cannabis use, and research demonstrates that striatal circuitry may be integral to response to AP drugs. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the relationship between a history of cannabis use disorder (CUD) and a striatal connectivity index (SCI), a previously developed neural biomarker for AP treatment response in SSD. Patients were part of a 12-week randomized, double-blind controlled treatment study of AP drugs. A sample of 48 first-episode SSD patients with no more than 2 weeks of lifetime exposure to AP medications, underwent a resting-state fMRI scan pretreatment. Treatment response was defined a priori as a binary (response/nonresponse) variable, and a SCI was calculated in each patient. We examined whether there was an interaction between lifetime CUD history and the SCI in relation to treatment response. We found that CUD history moderated the relationship between SCI and treatment response, such that it had little predictive value in SSD patients with a CUD history. In sum, our findings highlight that biomarker development can be critically impacted by patient behaviors that influence neurobiology, such as a history of CUD

The prognostic impact of circulating tumour dna in melanoma patients treated with systemic therapies—beyond braf mutant detection

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. In this study, we evaluated the predictive value of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) to inform therapeutic outcomes in metastatic melanoma patients receiving systemic therapies. We analysed 142 plasma samples from metastatic melanoma patients prior to commencement of systemic therapy: 70 were treated with BRAF/MEK inhibitors and 72 with immunotherapies. Patient-specific droplet digital polymerase chain reaction assays were designed for ctDNA detection. Plasma ctDNA was detected in 56% of patients prior to first-line anti-PD1 and/or anti-CTLA-4 treatment. The detection rate in the immunotherapy cohort was comparably lower than those with BRAF inhibitors (76%, p = 0.0149). Decreasing ctDNA levels within 12 weeks of treatment was strongly concordant with treatment response (Cohen’s k = 0.798, p \u3c 0.001) and predictive of longer progression free survival. Notably, a slower kinetic of ctDNA decline was observed in patients treated with immunotherapy compared to those on BRAF/MEK inhibitors. Whole exome sequencing of ctDNA was also conducted in 9 patients commencing anti-PD-1 therapy to derive tumour mutational burden (TMB) and neoepitope load measurements. The results showed a trend of high TMB and neoepitope load in responders compared to non-responders. Overall, our data suggest that changes in ctDNA can serve as an early indicator of outcomes in metastatic melanoma patients treated with systemic therapies and therefore may serve as a tool to guide treatment decisions