Sharing Stories and Learning to Lead: A Relational Mentoring Process Through Self-Portraiture

The creation of a relational, co-mentoring community for aspiring school leaders during their certification program may allow these future leaders to participate in a peer mentoring process wherein they engage one another in interdependence, experience reciprocal growth-fostering interactions, and tackle issues related to systemic power. The relational mentoring process creates a network of colleagues who understand the nature of the work of a principal candidate and who provide support and promote trust, knowing what they reveal will be held in confidence. This study focuses on two questions: How does the process of self-portraiture help principal candidates reflect on the kind of leader they want to become? How do principal candidates mentor one another through the selfportraiture process? The self-portrait is a form of auto-ethnography that the principal candidates write and share with one another as a part of the certification coursework

Collaborative Conversations Between Teacher and School Leader Candidates: A Co-Mentoring Network Develops

A co-mentoring network developed as teacher and school leader candidates met together during their preparation programs to discuss culturally sustaining, socially just pedagogy. The discussions were structured to be collaborative and conversational using shared anchor readings. This study reports the processes and practices used in establishing the co-mentoring network, themes that emerged from the candidates’ collaborative conversations, and how the candidates developed the co-mentoring network. The co-mentoring network used a relational mentoring stance (Fletcher & Ragins, 2007), exploring the three tenets of relational cultural theory: interdependent self-in-relation, growth-fostering interactions, and systemic power, which can affect mentoring relationships. Network participants sought to establish communication styles and trust which encouraged participants to share vulnerabilities with each other (Zachary & Fischler, 2014) while seeking to learn from each other’s experiences through discussion and reflection. It was through these discussions and the candidates’ reflections on their conversations that a co-mentoring network began to develop

Reproducibility of an HPLC-ESI-MS/MS Method for the Measurement of Stable-Isotope Enrichment of in Vivo-Labeled Muscle ATP Synthase Beta Subunit

We sought to evaluate the reproducibility of a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based approach to measure the stable-isotope enrichment of in vivo-labeled muscle ATP synthase β subunit (β-F1-ATPase), a protein most directly involved in ATP production, and whose abundance is reduced under a variety of circumstances. Muscle was obtained from a rat infused with stable-isotope-labeled leucine. The muscle was homogenized, β-F1-ATPase immunoprecipitated, and the protein was resolved using 1D-SDS PAGE. Following trypsin digestion of the isolated protein, the resultant peptide mixtures were subjected to analysis by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS, which resulted in the detection of multiple β-F1-ATPase peptides. There were three β-F1-ATPase unique peptides with a leucine residue in the amino acid sequence, and which were detected with high intensity relative to other peptides and assigned with >95% probability to β-F1-ATPase. These peptides were specifically targeted for fragmentation to access their stable-isotope enrichment based on MS/MS peak areas calculated from extracted ion chromatographs for selected labeled and unlabeled fragment ions. Results showed best linearity (R2 = 0.99) in the detection of MS/MS peak areas for both labeled and unlabeled fragment ions, over a wide range of amounts of injected protein, specifically for the β-F1-ATPase134-143 peptide. Measured stable-isotope enrichment was highly reproducible for the β-F1-ATPase134-143 peptide (CV = 2.9%). Further, using mixtures of synthetic labeled and unlabeled peptides we determined that there is an excellent linear relationship (R2 = 0.99) between measured and predicted enrichment for percent enrichments ranging between 0.009% and 8.185% for the β-F1-ATPase134-143 peptide. The described approach provides a reliable approach to measure the stable-isotope enrichment of in-vivo-labeled muscle β-F1-ATPase based on the determination of the enrichment of the β-F1-ATPase134-143 peptide

The Effectiveness of Pharmacological and Non-Pharmacological Interventions for Improving Glycaemic Control in Adults with Severe Mental Illness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

People with severe mental illness (SMI) have reduced life expectancy compared with the general population, which can be explained partly by their increased risk of diabetes. We conducted a meta-analysis to determine the clinical effectiveness of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for improving glycaemic control in people with SMI (PROSPERO registration: CRD42015015558). A systematic literature search was performed on 30/10/2015 to identify randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in adults with SMI, with or without a diagnosis of diabetes that measured fasting blood glucose or glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c). Screening and data extraction were carried out independently by two reviewers. We used random effects meta-analysis to estimate effectiveness, and subgroup analysis and univariate meta-regression to explore heterogeneity. The Cochrane Collaboration’s tool was used to assess risk of bias. We found 54 eligible RCTs in 4,392 adults (40 pharmacological, 13 behavioural, one mixed intervention). Data for meta-analysis were available from 48 RCTs (n = 4052). Both pharmacological (mean difference (MD), -0.11mmol/L; 95% confidence interval (CI), [-0.19, -0.02], p = 0.02, n = 2536) and behavioural interventions (MD, -0.28mmol//L; 95% CI, [-0.43, -0.12], p<0.001, n = 956) were effective in lowering fasting glucose, but not HbA1c (pharmacological MD, -0.03%; 95% CI, [-0.12, 0.06], p = 0.52, n = 1515; behavioural MD, 0.18%; 95% CI, [-0.07, 0.42], p = 0.16, n = 140) compared with usual care or placebo. In subgroup analysis of pharmacological interventions, metformin and antipsychotic switching strategies improved HbA1c. Behavioural interventions of longer duration and those including repeated physical activity had greater effects on fasting glucose than those without these characteristics. Baseline levels of fasting glucose explained some of the heterogeneity in behavioural interventions but not in pharmacological interventions. Although the strength of the evidence is limited by inadequate trial design and reporting and significant heterogeneity, there is some evidence that behavioural interventions, antipsychotic switching, and metformin can lead to clinically important improvements in glycaemic measurements in adults with SMI

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure

Collaborative Conversations for Culturally Sustaining, Socially Just Pedagogy: Creating A Safe Space for Dialogue and Practice

Given the increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse students in our nation’s schools (NCES, 2020), we need teachers and school leaders who teach in inclusive and socially just ways. In this qualitative case study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), we paired up leader candidates (LCs) and teacher candidates (TCs) in a series of collaborative conversations focused on culturally sustaining, socially just pedagogy (CSSJP) (Authors, 2018), to learn how bringing teacher and leader candidates together may support their understandings of enacting CSSJP. Collaborative conversations may help TCs and LCs share the responsibility of doing the challenging, but necessary, work of enacting CSSJP – work that is too big and important to shoulder alone