Organizational Development in Australia

Field Placement Experience, Summer 2012 -- Melbourne, Australia -- Partner Agencie(s): The Brotherhood of St. Laurencehttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110201/1/poster_hsu.tiffany.pd

An Examination of Conductors’ Leadership Skills

Through my experiences as a member of various large orchestral ensembles, I have been intrigued by how diverse my musical experiences were with different conductors. Some of these experiences have been thoroughly inspiring; I felt compelled to achieve higher levels of performance and convinced that I was a crucial part of creating something much larger than the notes on the page. Other experiences have been less musically fulfilling for me; I became disinterested and bored and felt little affective connection with the music. Reflecting on these different personal responses, I realized that the conductors in these experiences, in part, influenced such reactions. I trusted and admired these conductors for their confidence, musicality, and ability to lead a large group of people. In essence, these musical leaders possessed various leadership skills that contributed to their success, effectiveness, and appeal as conductors in my eyes. First, the successful conductors in my past experiences all possessed excellent musicianship in offering meaningful and powerful interpretations of the music and demonstrating complete knowledge of the score and its background. Second, these effective conductors maintained a sense of energy and momentum throughout their rehearsals that allowed me to stay focused and interested in music-making. They also presented musical concepts and ideas in ways that increased my understanding of the music. Lastly, I realized that these conductors’ verbal comments provided me with specific feedback and understandable instructions on how to improve my performance. These conductors were futher able to depict their musical interpretations through conducting gestures, facial expressions, and physical demeanors. Therefore, I identified musicianship, organization, and instructional strategies—both verbal and nonverbal—as three significant leadership skills that has improved the quality of my orchestral experiences. Reflections on my own experiences as a member of orchestral ensembles fueled my interest in honing my work as a developing conductor through an exploration of these three leadership skills. I am fully aware that the successes of the conductors in my past experiences also were attributed to other leadership skills. However, in this project, I sought an opportunity, as a developing conductor, to examine and self-reflect on these three specific leadership skills in order to generate my own style as a musician and leader. The purpose of this project was to examine how conductors’ leadership skills—musicianship, organization, and instructional strategies—impact the musical development of my project’s orchestral ensemble. This project involved my conducting of a volunteer, collegiate orchestra that I recruited. I conducted this orchestra for five rehearsals and a concert performance at my graduate recital. A crucial part of this project included my personal reflections on my leadership skills and their effects on the musical development of the orchestra I rehearsed

Inferring evolutionary histories of pathway regulation from transcriptional profiling data

One of the outstanding challenges in comparative genomics is to interpret the evolutionary importance of regulatory variation between species. Rigorous molecular evolution-based methods to infer evidence for natural selection from expression data are at a premium in the field, and to date, phylogenetic approaches have not been well-suited to address the question in the small sets of taxa profiled in standard surveys of gene expression. We have developed a strategy to infer evolutionary histories from expression profiles by analyzing suites of genes of common function. In a manner conceptually similar to molecular evolution models in which the evolutionary rates of DNA sequence at multiple loci follow a gamma distribution, we modeled expression of the genes of an \emph{a priori}-defined pathway with rates drawn from an inverse gamma distribution. We then developed a fitting strategy to infer the parameters of this distribution from expression measurements, and to identify gene groups whose expression patterns were consistent with evolutionary constraint or rapid evolution in particular species. Simulations confirmed the power and accuracy of our inference method. As an experimental testbed for our approach, we generated and analyzed transcriptional profiles of four \emph{Saccharomyces} yeasts. The results revealed pathways with signatures of constrained and accelerated regulatory evolution in individual yeasts and across the phylogeny, highlighting the prevalence of pathway-level expression change during the divergence of yeast species. We anticipate that our pathway-based phylogenetic approach will be of broad utility in the search to understand the evolutionary relevance of regulatory change.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, contact authors for supplementary table

Everyone Counts Open House and Reunion Luncheon

Why a luncheon? Over the past 10 years, 115 university employees and students have been engaged in either or both the Everyone Counts Diversity Learning Communities and Leadership for Diversity, Social Justice and Inclusion. While some individuals participated over multiple years, most participants were not connected to each other due to significant changes in participation year-to-year. This luncheon was planned in order to continue building a community of collaboration, facilitate campus synergy, and encourage future participation in the learning communities

Expression Profiling of the Wheat Pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici Reveals Genomic Patterns of Transcription and Host-Specific Regulatory Programs

Host specialization by pathogens requires a repertoire of virulence factors as well as fine-tuned regulation of gene expression. The fungal wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici (synonym Mycosphaerella graminicola) is a powerful model system for the discovery of genetic elements that underlie virulence and host specialization. We transcriptionally profiled the early stages of Z. tritici infection of a compatible host (wheat) and a noncompatible host (Brachypodium distachyon). The results revealed infection regulatory programs common to both hosts and genes with striking wheat-specific expression, with many of the latter showing sequence signatures of positive selection along the Z. tritici lineage. Genes specifically regulated during infection of wheat populated two large clusters of coregulated genes that may represent candidate pathogenicity islands. On evolutionarily labile, repeat-rich accessory chromosomes (ACs), we identified hundreds of highly expressed genes with signatures of evolutionary constraint and putative biological function. Phylogenetic analyses suggested that gene duplication events on these ACs were rare and largely preceded the diversification of Zymoseptoria species. Together, our data highlight the likely relevance for fungal growth and virulence of hundreds of Z. tritici genes, deepening the annotation and functional inference of the genes of this model pathogen

Social media users produce more affect that supports cultural values, but are more influenced by affect that violates cultural values

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by American Psychological Association in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000282 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Although social media plays an increasingly important role in communication around the world, social media research has primarily focused on Western users. Thus, little is known about how cultural values shape social media behavior. To examine how cultural affective values might influence social media use, we developed a new sentiment analysis tool that allowed us to compare the affective content of Twitter posts in the United States (55,867 tweets, 1888 users) and Japan (63,863 tweets, 1825 users). Consistent with their respective cultural affective values, U.S. users primarily produced positive (vs. negative) posts, while Japanese users primarily produced low (vs. high) arousal posts. Contrary to cultural affective values, however, U.S. users were more influenced by changes in others’ high arousal negative (e.g., angry) posts, whereas Japanese were more influenced by changes in others’ high arousal positive (e.g., excited) posts. These patterns held after controlling for differences in baseline exposure to affective content, and across different topics. Together, these results suggest that across cultures, while social media users primarily produce content that supports their affective values, they are more influenced by content that violates those values. These findings have implications for theories about which affective content spreads on social media, and for applications related to the optimal design and use of social media platforms around the world

The Mini Alcohol Craving Experience Questionnaire: Development and Clinical Application

Background - Standardised alcohol craving scales are rarely used outside of research environments despite recognised clinical utility. Scale length is a key barrier to more widespread application. A brief measure of alcohol craving is needed to improve research and treatment of Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs). Grounded in the Elaborated Intrusion Theory of Desire, the Alcohol Craving Experience (ACE) questionnaire comprises two 11 - item self-report scales which assess past-week frequency and maximum strength of alcohol craving . This study aimed to create a brief version of the ACE while maintaining psychometric integrity and clinical utility. Methods - Patients attending a university hospital alcohol and drug out-patient service for treatment of AUD completed the ACE as part of a questionnaire battery. Three patient samples were utilised: 519 patients with pre-treatmen t and outcome data; 228 patients with pre-treatment data; and 66 patients who completed the ACE at treatment sessions one and two. Results - The Frequency scale of the ACE possessed greater clinical utility and predictive validity than the Strength scale. Revision of the Frequency measure produced a 5-item ‘Mini Alcohol Craving Experience’ (MACE) questionnaire. Satisfactory validity (construct, predictive, concurrent, convergent, and incremental ) and reliability ( internal and test-retest ) was maintained. A one standard deviation increase in pre-treatment MACE score was associated with a 54 percent increase in the odds of patient lapse or dropout. Conclusions - The MACE provides a brief, theoretically and psychometrically robust measure of alcohol craving suitable for use with AUD populations in time-limited clinical and research settings

Variability in a dominant block to SIV early reverse transcription in rhesus monkey cells predicts in vivo viral replication and time to death

While it has long been appreciated that there is considerable variability in host containment of HIV/SIV replication, the determinants of that variability are not fully understood. Previous studies demonstrated that the degree of permissivity of a macaque's peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) for infection with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in vitro predicted that animal's peak plasma virus RNA levels following SIV infection in vivo. The present study was conducted to define the mechanisms underlying the variable intrinsic susceptibility of rhesus monkey PBMC to SIVsmE660 infection. In a cohort of 15 unrelated Indian-origin rhesus monkeys, infectability of PBMC of individual animals with SIVsmE660, as defined by tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50), varied by more than 3 logs and was a stable phenotype over time. Susceptibility of a monkey's PBMC to wild type SIVsmE660 infection correlated with the susceptibility of that monkey's PBMC to infection with VSV-G pseudotyped SIVsm543-GFP. Moreover, the permissivity of an individual monkey's PBMC for infection with this construct correlated with the permissivity of a B-lymphoblastoid cell line (B-LCL) generated from PBMC of the same animal. We found that the degree of intrinsic resistance of monkey B-LCL correlated with the copy number of early reverse transcription (ERT) SIV DNA. The resistance of monkey B-LCL to SIVsmE660 replication could be abrogated by preincubation of cells with the SIV virus-like particles (VLPs) and SIV resistance phenotype could be transferred to a SIV susceptible B-LCL through cell fusion. Finally, we observed a positive correlation between susceptibility of monkey B-LCL to SIV infection with a VSV-G pseudotyped SIV-GFP construct in vitro and both the peak plasma virus RNA levels in vivo and time to death following wild type SIV infection. These findings suggest that a dominant early RT restricting factor that can be saturated by SIV capsid may contribute to the variable resistance to SIV infection in rhesus monkey B-LCL and that this differential intrinsic susceptibility contributes to the clinical outcome of an SIV infection