Administrator unions versus the management team concept: a comparative attitudinal study of principals, superintendants and board presidents in Iowa and Connecticut

The purpose of this study was to investigate the present status of the management team concept as viewed by principals, superintendents, and boards of education in the public schools in Iowa. In addition, the study examined attitudes relating to formalized collective bargaining by public school principals. An attempt was made to compare attitudes among board members, principals and superintendents in Iowa along with those in similar positions in Connecticut--a state in which eighty percent of the public school districts already have formal collective bargaining agreements with their principals;The questionnaire used to collect the data contained fifty attitudinal statements relating to collective bargaining by principals. Respondents indicated their position on a five-point Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The attitude statements represented ten categories depicting the ten most often stated reasons by principals for considering unionization: (1) unfavorable interpersonal relationships, (2) no voice in decision-making, (3) erosion of authority/power, (4) decline in morale, (5) inadequate communication, (6) lack of clarity in role definitions, (7) inadequate salary and fringe benefits, (8) protection/security, (9) esteem, and (10) a changed political environment;It was concluded that Iowa principals differ significantly from superintendents and board presidents in their attitudes relating to formal collective bargaining by principals. While strong, solid principal support for collective bargaining could not be substantiated, a number of interesting conclusions could be made;Most Iowa superintendents believed that they were providing a leadership style which encompassed the concept of team management. Eighty percent of the elementary principals in Iowa bought their story and less than fifty-six percent of the Iowa secondary principals in Iowa were believers. Attitudes varied somewhat with factors such as position, size of district, age and perceptions of present salaries of the building administrators;In Connecticut, all groups surveyed tended to have become more mellow than their Iowa counterparts in their attitudes toward collective bargaining. All four groups of respondents provided data suggesting attitudes more favorable to bargaining than did their Iowa counterparts;It was generally agreed that collective bargaining by Iowa principals would not provide a positive step toward improved principal/superintendent/board relationships, nor would such a move uphold the image of the principalship as viewed by patrons of the district. The younger less-experienced principal tended to be more satisfied with his/her working conditions than did the more-experienced ones

Identification of Photorhabdus temperata motility mutants altered in insect pathogenesis

The entomopathogenic nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora forms a specific association with its bacterial partner Photorhabdus temperata. The objective of this study was to identify genes involved in insect pathogenesis. Previously we generated a bank of 10,000 transposon mutants and identified 86 motility mutants and 11 calcofluor-binding mutants. The purpose of these experiments was to determine the effects of these defects on bacterial pathogenesis and mutualism. An insect mortality screen with host-model, Galleria mellonella, initially identified 14 mutants with altered insect pathogenesis. Four mutants were confirmed including one (UNH5832) with an enhanced pathogenesis response compared to the parental wild-type, while three other mutants (UNH1307, UNH6441, UNH2033) exhibited a delayed response that was not related to growth rate. These verified mutants include 3 defective motility mutants and one calcofluor-binding mutant. Genetic complementation of UNH1307 proved RNase II to have pleiotropic effects in P. temperata , including the regulation of virulence and motility

GATE Monte Carlo Simulations in a Cloud Computing Environment

The GEANT4-based GATE is a unique and powerful Monte Carlo (MC) platform, which provides a single code library allowing the simulation of specific medical physics applications, e.g. PET, SPECT, CT, radiotherapy, and hadron therapy. However, this rigorous yet flexible platform is used only sparingly in the clinic due to its lengthy calculation time. By accessing the powerful computational resources of a cloud computing environment, GATE\u27s runtime can be significantly reduced to clinically feasible levels without the sizable investment of a local high performance cluster. This study investigated a reliable and efficient execution of GATE MC simulations using a commercial cloud computing services. Amazon\u27s Elastic Compute Cloud was used to launch several nodes equipped with GATE. Job data was initially broken up on the local computer, then uploaded to the worker nodes on the cloud. The results were automatically downloaded and aggregated on the local computer for display and analysis. Five simulations were repeated for every cluster size between 1 and 20 nodes. Ultimately, increasing cluster size resulted in a decrease in calculation time that could be expressed with an inverse power model. Comparing the benchmark results to the published values and error margins indicated that the simulation results were not affected by the cluster size and thus that integrity of a calculation is preserved in a cloud computing environment. The runtime of a 53 minute long simulation was decreased to 3.11 minutes when run on a 20-node cluster. The ability to improve the speed of simulation suggests that fast MC simulations are viable for imaging and radiotherapy applications. With high power computing continuing to lower in price and accessibility, implementing Monte Carlo techniques with cloud computing for clinical applications will continue to become more attractive

“Yunnan Goes International”: The Active Involvement of Yunnan in Asian Subregionalism as a Case of Subnational External Affairs

中国西南省份云南与缅甸，老挝及越南接壤，拥有连接中国内地与东南亚及南亚的独特位置，使其成为自古以来的重要的商贸和文化跨区域中心。这一跨区域跨国家的历史特质已使云南演变为一个存在于相异的实体之间及内部的现代环境，这些实体有着一个新的政治经济区域化构建，并呈现次区域化的趋势。 因此，本研究旨在审视云南与东南亚及南亚的次区域合作动态的融合，研究角度为次国家在国际或境外事务的参与理论。 其中，区域和次区域合作的理论复合将与次国家外交关系的理论相结合，后者涉及的理论主要为西方中心式的平行外交或多层次外交概念，以便获得一个贯穿本文的具体修正的框架结构，该结构包含云南“小外交”（即指次国家政府的外交活动...With direct borders to Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan is uniquely positioned between portions of China, Southeast Asia and South Asia, which has made it an important commercial and cultural cross-regional hub throughout ancient and pre-modern history. This cross-regional and transnational legacy has been translated into the modern context of lying between an...学位：法学硕士院系专业：南洋研究院_国际关系学号：3022010115436

Elucidation of the Photorhabdus temperata Genome and Generation of a Transposon Mutant Library To Identify Motility Mutants Altered in Pathogenesis

The entomopathogenic nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora forms a specific mutualistic association with its bacterial partner Photorhabdus temperata. The microbial symbiont is required for nematode growth and development, and symbiont recognition is strain specific. The aim of this study was to sequence the genome of P. temperata and identify genes that plays a role in the pathogenesis of the Photorhabdus-Heterorhabditis symbiosis. A draft genome sequence of P. temperata strain NC19 was generated. The 5.2-Mb genome was organized into 17 scaffolds and contained 4,808 coding sequences (CDS). A genetic approach was also pursued to identify mutants with altered motility. A bank of 10,000 P. temperata transposon mutants was generated and screened for altered motility patterns. Five classes of motility mutants were identified: (i) nonmotile mutants, (ii) mutants with defective or aberrant swimming motility, (iii) mutant swimmers that do not require NaCl or KCl, (iv) hyperswimmer mutants that swim at an accelerated rate, and (v) hyperswarmer mutants that are able to swarm on the surface of 1.25% agar. The transposon insertion sites for these mutants were identified and used to investigate other physiological properties, including insect pathogenesis. The motility-defective mutant P13-7 had an insertion in the RNase II gene and showed reduced virulence and production of extracellular factors. Genetic complementation of this mutant restored wild-type activity. These results demonstrate a role for RNA turnover in insect pathogenesis and other physiological functions

Response of understory avifauna to annual flooding of Amazonian floodplain forests

The annual flooding in the Amazon basin transforms the understory of floodplain forests into an aquatic environment. However, a great number of non-aquatic bird species occupy the understory and midstory of these forests. In general, these birds are thought to be sedentary and territorial, but the way they adapt to this dramatic seasonal transformation has never been described in detail. In this study, we describe avifaunal strategies to cope with seasonal flooding in the lower Purus region, central Amazonia, Brazil. We conducted focal observations of five insectivorous species occupying the lowest forest strata in two types of floodplain forest (black- and whitewater) during the low- and high-water seasons. For each observation, the height of the bird above the substrate (ground or water), its vertical position in the forest, and vegetation density around the bird were noted. All species remained present in the floodplain forests during the two seasons and were not recorded in adjacent unflooded (terra firme) forest. In general, birds migrated vertically to higher forest strata and most species (three of the five) occupied similar vegetation densities independent of water level. Despite the tendency of all species to rise in relative vertical position at high water, there was a reduction in height above substrate for four of the five species, suggesting that their position relative to water was not an important microhabitat element for them. Responses were similar in the two floodplain forest types. It is likely that the decrease in available space during the flood, combined with similar vertical displacement in arthropods, leads to increased prey density for understory insectivorous birds and permits year-round territoriality without major habitat shifts

Discovery of the first potent and selective αvβ5 integrin inhibitor based on an amide-containing core

Integrins αvβ5 and αvβ3 are closely related, proangiogenic members of the wider RGD-binding integrin family. Due to their high sequence homology, the development of αvβ5-selective compounds has remained elusive to synthetic and medicinal chemists. Herein, we describe a survey of SAR around a series of amide-containing 3-aryl-succinamic acid-based RGD mimetics. This resulted in the discovery of α,α,α-trifluorotolyl 12 which exhibits 800 × selectivity for αvβ5 versus αvβ3 with a pyrrolidine amide linker that confers selectivity for αvβ5 by positioning a key aryl ring in the SDL of αvβ5 with good complementarity; binding in this mode is disfavoured in αvβ3 due to clashes with key residues in the β3-subunit. Compound 12 exhibits selective inhibition by a cell adhesion assay, high passive permeability and solubility which enables potential use of this inhibitor as an αvβ5-selective in vitro tool compound

Design and elaboration of a tractable tricyclic scaffold to synthesize druglike inhibitors of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4), antagonists of the C–C Chemokine Receptor Type 5 (CCR5), and highly potent and selective phosphoinositol-3 Kinase δ (PI3Kδ) inhibitors

A novel molecular scaffold has been synthesized, and its incorporation into new analogues of biologically active molecules across multiple target classes will be discussed. In these studies, we have shown use of the tricyclic scaffold to synthesize potent inhibitors of the serine peptidase DPP-4, antagonists of the CCR5 receptor, and highly potent and selective PI3K δ isoform inhibitors. We also describe the predicted physicochemical properties of the resulting inhibitors and conclude that the tractable molecular scaffold could have potential application in future drug discovery programs

A Phase I and Pharmacologic Study of Weekly Gemcitabine in Combination with Infusional 5-fluorodeoxyuridine and Oral Calcium Leucovorin

Purpose: Since preclinical studies have shown more than additive cytotoxicity and DNA damage with the combination of gemcitabine and 5-fluoro-2′-deoxyuridine (FUDR), we studied this combination in a phase I trial. Methods: Gemcitabine alone was given in cycle 1 as a 24-h, 2-h or 1-h i.v. infusion weekly for 3 of 4 weeks; if tolerated, a 24-h i.v. infusion of FUDR was added with oral leucovorin. The cycle was aborted for grade 3 thrombocytopenia, grade 4 neutropenia, and grade 2 or worse nonhematologic toxicity. Results: During cycle 1, six of eight patients who received 150 or 100 mg/m2 over 24 h had dose-limiting neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, fatigue or mucositis. Six of seven patients treated with 1000 mg/m2 over 2 h required a gemcitabine dose reduction for cycle 2 (thrombocytopenia, neutropenia, fatigue). Of 25 assessable patients who received gemcitabine 1000 mg/m2 over 1 h, 7 did not complete cycle 1 due to thrombocytopenia (n = 6) or diarrhea (n = 1). Of 42 patients entered, 27 received at least one course of gemcitabine/FUDR (5-19.5 mg/m2 over 24 h) without appreciable toxicity. Due to a shortage of FUDR, the protocol was closed early. Gemcitabine plasma concentrations averaged 0.061 μM (24 h), 16.3 μM (2 h), and 31.9 μM (1 h). In 21 paired bone marrow mononuclear cell samples obtained before treatment and during FUDR infusion, thymidylate synthase ternary complex was only seen during FUDR infusion. Conclusions: Gemcitabine 100-150 mg/m2 over 24 h was poorly tolerated, whereas toxicity was acceptable with 800-1000 mg/m2 over 1 h. Inhibition of the target enzyme was demonstrated at all FUDR doses