So, who\u27s in charge?! : Managing Differences in Perceived Leaders Among Volunteers

Volunteers contribute greatly to the success of many organizations in the nation; this is especially true for nonprofit organizations that often find themselves stretched thin financially. Interestingly, although the importance of volunteers is generally acknowledged, there is little research investigating volunteers\u27 perceptions of their leaders. When it comes to volunteers, expectations for leadership may be different than for employees. To address this gap in the literature, we take a step back and seek to understand the underlying nature of leadership for volunteers in nonprofit organizations. Studies have often bypassed the usefulness of qualitative research in examining new phenomenon. In an effort to avoid simply drawing comparisons between volunteers and employees, we sought to understand how volunteer leadership looks to volunteers by analyzing the perceived strengths and weaknesses of their leaders through a series of open-ended questions. Given previous robust work on leadership in organizations, we anticipated that we would see different leadership styles emerge across different organizations. The responses to the open-ended questions were coded for emergent themes which were then analyzed. We found evidence that volunteers\u27 perceptions of their leaders primarily align with task- and relations-oriented leadership styles. This study provided insight to how volunteer leadership looks to volunteers in nonprofit organizations. The results of this study highlight the importance of gaining a deeper understanding into how leadership is perceived by volunteers in nonprofit organizations, as well as how this perception may differ from paid employees in other organizations

Prevalences of Some Virulence Genes among Escherichia Coli Isolates from Swine Presented to a Diagnostic Laboratory in Iowa

Escherichia coli strains that carry genes encoding for specific virulence attributes cause diarrhea and edema disease in swine. Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) have genes for enterotoxins that stimulate secretion of electrolytes and water by the small intestine. To colonize the small intestine and cause diarrhea, ETEC must also produce fimbriae (pili). Escherechia coli strains that cause edema disease produce E. coli Shiga toxin (Verotoxin) and are designated as STEC.Shiga toxin is absorbed from the intestine into blood and causes systemic vascular damage resulting in edema disease. STEC must also produce fimbriae to colonize the small intestine and cause disease. Some E. coli strains are designated as attaching/effacing E. coli (AEEC) because of their ability to attach intimately to the surface of intestinal epithelial cells and efface microvilli.10 The attaching/effacing attribute is encoded by a series of chromosomal genes located in a pathogenicity island called the locus of enterocyte effacement. ETEC, STEC, and AEEC are considered to be different pathotypes of E. coli. However, some of the virulence genes that characterize them can be located on mobile genetic elements (plasmids, transposons, bacteriophages), and combinations of pathotypes occur. For example, some AEEC such as the human pathogen E. coli O157:H7 also have genes for Shiga toxin production, and some strains associated with edema disease of swine have genes for both Shiga toxin and enterotoxin production

From presence to consciousness through virtual reality

Immersive virtual environments can break the deep, everyday connection between where our senses tell us we are and where we are actually located and whom we are with. The concept of 'presence' refers to the phenomenon of behaving and feeling as if we are in the virtual world created by computer displays. In this article, we argue that presence is worthy of study by neuroscientists, and that it might aid the study of perception and consciousness

Explanation and elaboration of the Standards for UNiversal reporting of patient Decision Aid Evaluations (SUNDAE) guidelines: examples of reporting SUNDAE items from patient decision aid evaluation literature

This Explanation and Elaboration (E&E) article expands on the 26 items in the Standards for UNiversal reporting of Decision Aid Evaluations (SUNDAE) guidelines. The E&E provides a rationale for each item and includes examples for how each item has been reported in published papers evaluating patient decision aids. The Explanation and Elaboration focuses on items key to reporting studies evaluating patient decision aids and is intended to be illustrative rather than restrictive. Authors and reviewers may wish to use the Explanation and Elaboration broadly to inform structuring of patient decision aid evaluation reports, or use it as a reference to obtain details about how to report individual Checklist items

Standards for UNiversal reporting of patient Decision Aid Evaluation studies: the development of SUNDAE Checklist

Background: Patient decision aids (PDAs) are evidence-based tools designed to help patients make specific and deliberated choices among healthcare options. The International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration review papers and Cochrane systematic review of PDAs have found significant gaps in the reporting of evaluations of PDAs, including poor or limited reporting of PDA content, development methods, and delivery. This study sought to develop and reach consensus on reporting guidelines to improve the quality of publications evaluating PDAs. Methods: An international workgroup, consisting of members from IPDAS Collaboration, followed established methods to develop reporting guidelines for PDA evaluation studies. This paper describes the results from three completed phases (1) Planning, (2) Drafting, and (3) Consensus, which included a modified, two stage, online international Delphi process. The work was conducted over two years with bi-monthly conference calls and three in-person meetings. The workgroup used input from these phases to produce a final set of recommended items in the form of a checklist. Results: The SUNDAE Checklist (Standards for UNiversal reporting of patient Decision Aid Evaluations) includes 26 items recommended for studies reporting evaluations of PDAs. In the two-stage Delphi process, 117/143 (82%) experts from 14 countries completed round 1 and 96/117 (82%) completed round 2. Respondents reached a high level of consensus on the importance of the items and indicated strong willingness to use the items when reporting PDA studies. Conclusion: The SUNDAE Checklist will help ensure that reports of PDA evaluation studies are understandable, transparent, and of high quality. A separate Explanation and Elaboration publication provides additional details to support use of the Checklist

Impact of agent reliability and predictability on trust in real time human-agent collaboration

Trust is a prerequisite for effective human-agent collaboration. While past work has studied how trust relates to an agent's reliability, it has been mainly carried out in turn based scenarios, rather than during real-time ones. Previous research identified the performance of an agent as a key factor influencing trust. In this work, we posit that an agent's predictability also plays an important role in the trust relationship, which may be observed based on users' interactions. We designed a 2x2 within-groups experiment with two baseline conditions: (1) no agent (users' individual performance), and (2) near-flawless agent (upper bound). Participants took part in an interactive aiming task where they had to collaborate with different agents that varied in terms of their predictability, and were controlled in terms of their performance. Our results show that agents whose behaviours are easier to predict have a more positive impact on task performance, reliance and trust while reducing cognitive workload. In addition, we modelled the human-agent trust relationship and demonstrated that it is possible to reliably predict users' trust ratings using real-time interaction data. This work seeks to pave the way for the development of trust-aware agents capable of adapting and responding more appropriately to users

Promoting Diversity and Combatting Discrimination in Research Organizations: A Practitioner’s Guide

The essay is addressed to practitioners in research management and from academic leadership. It describes which measures can contribute to creating an inclusive climate for research teams and preventing and effectively dealing with discrimination. The practical recommendations consider the policy and organizational levels, as well as the individual perspective of research managers. Following a series of basic recommendations, six lessons learned are formulated, derived from the contributions to the edited collection on "Diversity and Discrimination in Research Organizations.

Telepresence and the Role of the Senses

The telepresence experience can be evoked in a number of ways. A well-known example is a player of videogames who reports about a telepresence experience, a subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when physically situated in another place. In this paper we set the phenomenon of telepresence into a theoretical framework. As people react subjectively to stimuli from telepresence, empirical studies can give more evidence about the phenomenon. Thus, our contribution is to bridge the theoretical with the empirical. We discuss theories of perception with an emphasis on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Gibson, the role of the senses and the Spinozian belief procedure. The aim is to contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon. A telepresence-study that included the affordance concept is used to empirically study how players report sense-reactions to virtual sightseeing in two cities. We investigate and explore the interplay of the philosophical and the empirical. The findings indicate that it is not only the visual sense that plays a role in this experience, but all senses

On the link between ocean biota emissions, aerosol, and maritime clouds: Airborne, ground, and satellite measurements off the coast of California

Surface, airborne, and satellite measurements over the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of California during the period between 2005 and 2007 are used to explore the relationship between ocean chlorophyll a, aerosol, and marine clouds. Periods of enhanced chlorophyll a and wind speed are coincident with increases in particulate diethylamine and methanesulfonate concentrations. The measurements indicate that amines are a source of secondary organic aerosol in the marine atmosphere. Subsaturated aerosol hygroscopic growth measurements indicate that the organic component during periods of high chlorophyll a and wind speed exhibit considerable water uptake ability. Increased average cloud condensation nucleus (CCN) activity during periods of increased chlorophyll a levels likely results from both size distribution and aerosol composition changes. The available data over the period of measurements indicate that the cloud microphysical response, as represented by either cloud droplet number concentration or cloud droplet effective radius, is likely influenced by a combination of atmospheric dynamics and aerosol perturbations during periods of high chlorophyll a concentrations