Leading by Narratives

A crucial perspective to academic leadership is that of sharing inspiring stories. Stories of successes and failures help an academic community to navigate itself by explicated and explicating tacit knowledge, in a bottom-up fashion. Unlike the hierarchical top-down management approach that focuses on strategic decision making within controllable environments, shared (or distributed) leadership copes with and even makes use of the uncertainties, common in fragile academic settings. When the shared leadership uses the stories of the whole (academic) community—faculty, staff and students—as its main source of information, we use the term leadership by narratives. Technologies for digital storytelling can significantly support leadership by narratives. Individuals upload their stories that an intelligent engine can relate to each other or sequence into more comprehensive understanding of the status of and trends within the organization. Modern big data techniques allow the community to reflect and therefore self-assess their processes, progress and results, based on the shared stories. In addition to the number-based facts, the leadership can make use of emotional expressions, to identify weak signals as early indicators of unexpected changes or threats identified at the grassroots level. Leading by narratives is a leadership approach for academic organizations that complements or even conflicts with the prevailing approach of a university as an efficient factory producing skilled labour force. Leadership by narratives aims at transforming the universities back to what they are supposed to be: communities known for their striving to the truth by sharing observations and experiences in the atmosphere of mutual trust. This is also a precondition for what the society expects from academic people and organizations: innovations, or fresh ideas that work in practice

Matrix metalloproteinase 9 inhibits the motility of highly aggressive HSC-3 oral squamous cell carcinoma cells

Pro-tumorigenic activities of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 9 have been linked to many cancers, but recently the tumour-suppressing role of MMP9 has also been elucidated. The multifaceted evidence on this subject prompted us to examine the role of MMP9 in the behaviour of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) cells. We used gelatinase-specific inhibitor, CTT2, and short hairpin (sh) RNA gene silencing to study the effects of MMP9 on proliferation, motility and invasion of an aggressive OTSCC cell line, HSC-3. We found that the migration and invasion of HSC-3 cells were increased by CTT2 and shRNA silencing of MMP9. Proliferation, in turn, was decreased by MMP9 inhibition. Furthermore, arresten-overexpressing HSC-3 cells expressed increased levels of MMP9, but exhibited decreased motility compared with controls. Interestingly, these cells restored their migratory capabilities by CTT2 inhibition of MMP9. Hence, although higher MMP9 expression could give rise to an increased tumour growth in vivo due to increased proliferation, in some circumstances, it may participate in yet unidentified molecular mechanisms that reduce the cell movement in OTSCC.Peer reviewe

Experimental and DFT‑D Studies of the Molecular Organic Energetic Material RDX

We have performed simulations utilizing the dispersion-corrected density functional theory method (DFT-D) as parametrized by Grimme on selected polymorphs of RDX (cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine). Additionally, we present the first experimental determination of the enthalpy of fusion (Δ<i>H</i>_fus) of the highly metastable β-form of RDX. The characteristics of fusion for β-RDX were determined to be 186.7 ± 0.8 °C, 188.5 ± 0.4 °C, and 12.63 ± 0.28 kJ mol^–1 for the onset temperature, peak temperature (or melting point), and Δ<i>H</i>_fus, respectively. The difference in experimental Δ<i>H</i>_fus for the α- and β-forms of RDX is 20.46 ± 0.92 kJ mol^–1. Ambient-pressure lattice energies (<i>E</i>_L) of the α- and β-forms of RDX have been calculated and are in excellent agreement with experiment. In addition the computationally predicted difference in <i>E</i>_L (20.35 kJ mol^–1) between the α- and β-forms is in excellent agreement with the experimental difference in Δ<i>H</i>_fus. The response of the lattice parameters and unit-cell volumes to pressure for the α- and γ-forms have been investigated, in addition to the first high-pressure computational study of the ε-form of RDXthese results are in very good agreement with experimental data. Phonon calculations provide good agreement for vibrational frequencies obtained from Raman spectroscopy, and a predicted inelastic neutron scattering (INS) spectrum of α-RDX shows excellent agreement with experimental INS data determined in this study. The transition energies and intensities are reproduced, confirming that both the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors of the vibrations are correctly described by the DFT-D method. The results of the high-pressure phonon calculations have been used to show that the heat capacities of the α-, γ-, and ε-forms of RDX are only weakly affected by pressure