Exploring the Impact of an Online Leadership Course on Japanese Undergraduates\u27 Conceptions of Leadership

Today’s complex problems transcend borders and require a collective and adaptive learning response. Literature suggests that, because the traditional hierarchical or positional style of leadership cannot effectively address problems we face today, leadership should take a more collaborative and systemic form. Rost (1991) characterized this new approach as the postindustrial paradigm of leadership. Unfortunately, changing the existing conception of leadership is not easy. Furthermore, assessing people’s leadership perceptions is challenging because leadership is often a tacit and latent construct. Because formal leadership education is still in its infancy in Japan, little is known about the impact of leadership education in higher education on students’ understandings of leadership in the Japanese context. This study aims to understand how Japanese college students reshape their understandings of the postindustrial model of leadership through taking an online leadership course. This mixed methods study adopted a one-group pretest-posttest study design to examine changes in students’ understandings of leadership. An online survey composed of the Leadership Attitudes and Behaviors Scale and a request for participant-produced drawings of leadership images was administered at both the beginning and end of the semester to 124 students enrolled in a semester-long online leadership course at a large university in Japan. To gain more in-depth insight, I also employed semistructured interviews with 11 students enrolled in the course. Survey results demonstrated students enrolled in the leadership course were, overall, less enthusiastic about hierarchical approaches to leadership and more enthusiastic about systemic approaches to leadership after taking the course. Interviews revealed two factors that affected shifts in students’ understandings of leadership: past leadership experience and learning experience in class. Students’ leadership experiences before attending the leadership course shaped their understandings of leadership at the beginning of the course, and how students made sense of their past leadership experiences influenced shifts in thinking during the course. In addition, student learning experience in class impacted shifts in their conceptions of leadership. The study’s findings about the impact of a leadership course in Japan support future leadership education in Japan. They also strengthened the academic legitimacy of leadership education in higher education generally

The Effects of Free Will Beliefs in Japan: Disbelief in Free Will Impairs Overriding Impulsive Decisions

The present research aims at testing the effects of disbelief in free will on overriding impulsive decisions in Japan. Past research conducted in Western countries has found that induced disbelief in free will can weaken motivation of self-control. In the present research, the authors tested the generalizability of the findings in a study involving Japanese students. Results show that participants whose belief in free will was challenged reported less likelihood and desirability of overriding the impulsive decision. These findings suggest that some basic assumptions of the effects of disbelief in free will could be generalized across cultures

Phase Separation of Multi-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates of Trapped Atoms and Molecules with a Homonuclear Feshbach Resonance

We investigate phase separation of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of two-component atoms and one-component molecules with a homonuclear Feshbach resonance. We develop a full model for dilute atomic and molecular gases including correlation of the Feshbach resonance and all kinds of interparticle interactions, and numerically calculate order parameters of the BECs in spherical harmonic oscillator traps at zero temperature with the Bogoliubov's classical field approximation. As a result, we find out that the Feshbach resonance can induce two types of phase separation. The actual phase structures and density profiles of the trapped gases are predicted in the whole parameter region, from the atom dominant regime to the molecule dominant regime. We focus on the role of the molecules in the phase separation. Especially in the atom dominant regime, the role of the molecules is described through effective interactions derived from our model. Furthermore we show that a perturbative and semi-classical limit of our model reproduces the conventional atomic BEC (single-channel) model.Comment: 11pages, 4 figure

Temperature Distribution Imaging inside Power Devices by Real-Time Simulation

We propose an imaging method of temperature dis-tribution inside a power device in real-time. The imaging system was constructed by integrating a real-time moni-toring and a real-time simulation. The surface tempera-tures of a device under test (DUT) is monitored by in-frared cameras and a high speed temperature simulator calculates temperature distribution inside the DUT by using the surface temperatures as boundary conditions. Our system successively imaged inside temperature dis-tribution of a TO packaged power diode under power cycling test with frame rate of 1 fps.2017 International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials (SSDM2017), Sendai International Center, Sendai, Japan, Sep.19-22,201

Inferring modules of functionally interacting proteins using the Bond Energy Algorithm

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Non-homology based methods such as phylogenetic profiles are effective for predicting functional relationships between proteins with no considerable sequence or structure similarity. Those methods rely heavily on traditional similarity metrics defined on pairs of phylogenetic patterns. Proteins do not exclusively interact in pairs as the final biological function of a protein in the cellular context is often hold by a group of proteins. In order to accurately infer modules of functionally interacting proteins, the consideration of not only direct but also indirect relationships is required.</p> <p>In this paper, we used the Bond Energy Algorithm (<it>BEA</it>) to predict functionally related groups of proteins. With <it>BEA </it>we create clusters of phylogenetic profiles based on the associations of the surrounding elements of the analyzed data using a metric that considers linked relationships among elements in the data set.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using phylogenetic profiles obtained from the Cluster of Orthologous Groups of Proteins (<it>COG</it>) database, we conducted a series of clustering experiments using <it>BEA </it>to predict (upper level) relationships between profiles. We evaluated our results by comparing with <it>COG's </it>functional categories, And even more, with the experimentally determined functional relationships between proteins provided by the <it>DIP </it>and <it>ECOCYC </it>databases. Our results demonstrate that <it>BEA </it>is capable of predicting meaningful modules of functionally related proteins. <it>BEA </it>outperforms traditionally used clustering methods, such as <it>k</it>-means and hierarchical clustering by predicting functional relationships between proteins with higher accuracy.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study shows that the linked relationships of phylogenetic profiles obtained by <it>BEA </it>is useful for detecting functional associations between profiles and extending functional modules not found by traditional methods. <it>BEA </it>is capable of detecting relationship among phylogenetic patterns by linking them through a common element shared in a group. Additionally, we discuss how the proposed method may become more powerful if other criteria to classify different levels of protein functional interactions, as gene neighborhood or protein fusion information, is provided.</p

The Relationship Between Deep Rooting and Nitrate Leaching of Wheat in Subsoil Acidity

Poster Session