The mediation between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation: Examining intermediate knowledge mechanisms

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.We examine mediation effects of coworker knowledge sharing and absorptive capacity on the participative leadership–employee exploratory innovation relationship in R&D units of Taiwanese technology firms. Deploying a time-lagged questionnaire method implemented over four business quarters, data is generated from 1600 paired samples (managers and employees) in R&D units of Taiwanese technology firms. The structural equation modeling results reveal that (1) participative leadership is positively related to employee exploratory innovation; (2) coworker knowledge and (3) absorptive capacity partially mediate the relationship between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation independently; and, (4) coworker knowledge sharing in combination with absorptive capacity partially mediates this relationship. The results extend previous research on participative leadership and innovation by demonstrating that participative leadership is related to employee exploratory innovation (Lee and Meyer-Doyle, 2017; Mom et al., 2009).Results also confirm that participative leadership drives employee exploratory innovation through employee absorptive capacity. This reinforces the need highlighted by Lane et al. (2006) to investigate the role of absorptive capacity at the individual-level. Collectively, while participative leadership is important for employee exploratory innovation it is the knowledge mechanisms existing and interacting at the employee-level that are central to generating increased employee exploratory innovation from this leadership approach

Context effects on second-language learning of tonal contrasts.

Studies of lexical tone  learning generally focus on monosyllabic contexts, while reports of phonetic learning benefits associated with input variability are based largely on experienced learners. This study trained inexperienced learners on Mandarin tonal contrasts to test two hypotheses regarding the influence of context and variability on tone  learning. The first hypothesis was that increased phonetic variability of tones in disyllabic contexts makes initial tone  learning more challenging in disyllabic than monosyllabic words. The second hypothesis was that the learnability of a given tone varies across contexts due to differences in tonal variability. Results of a word learning experiment supported both hypotheses: tones were acquired less successfully in disyllables than in monosyllables, and the relative difficulty of disyllables was closely related to contextual tonal variability. These results indicate limited relevance of monosyllable-based data on Mandarin learning for the disyllabic majority of the Mandarin lexicon. Furthermore, in the short term, variability can diminish learning; its effects are not necessarily beneficial but dependent on acquisition stage and other learner characteristics. These findings thus highlight the importance of considering contextual variability and the interaction between variability and type of learner in the design, interpretation, and application of research on phonetic learning

UV-Photolithography Fabrication of Poly-Ethylene Glycol Hydrogels Encapsulated with Hepatocytes

The development of biomanufacturing technologies particularly, layered manufacturing has advanced cell encapsulation processes in an effort to mimic the cellular microenvironment for invitro studies. This paper illustrates an inexpensive UV-photolithographic method for encapsulation of human hepatocytes in three dimensional structures using poly-ethylene diacrylate (PEGDA) hydrogels as candidate substrates. In order to further develop this technology for layered fabrication, we have quantified the long-term effects of the photo-initiator concentration and UV light exposure on the metabolic rates of encapsulated human hepatocytes under a 21 day study. The photoinitator toxicity was observed immediately after polymerization with no significant cytotoxicity on a long term basis. A cellular viability is examined and reported for the UV photopolymerization process. Cell phenotype maintenance was observed by measuring the amount of urea produced over a 1 week time period. This photo encapsulation process may find use in the fabrication of spatially complex 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering applications, elucidation of the 3D structure-pharmacokinetic response relationship and the fabrication of complex multi-compartment liver tissue analog devices for drug screening applications.Mechanical Engineerin

The Asian Liquidity Crisis

A country's financial system is internationally illiquid if its potential short term obligations in foreign currency exceed the amount of foreign currency it can have access to in short notice. This condition may be crucial for the existence of financial crises and/or exchange rate collapses (Chang and Velasc 1998a, b). In this paper we argue that the 1997-98 crises in Asia were in fact a consequence of international illiquidity.LIQUIDITY ; BANKS ; CURRENCIES ; MONETARY CRISIS

On the detectability of key-MeV solar protons through their nonthermal Lyman-alpha emission

The intensity and timescale of nonthermal Doppler-shifted hydrogen L alpha photon emission as diagnostics of 10 keV to 10 MeV protons bombarding the solar chromosphere during flares are investigated. The steady-state excitation and ionization balance of the proton beam are determined, taking into account all important atomic interactions with the ambient chromosphere. For a proton energy flux comparable to the electron energy flux commonly inferred for large flares, L alpha wing intensities orders of magnitude larger than observed nonflaring values were found. Investigation of timescales for ionization and charge exchange leads researchers to conclude that over a wide range of values of mean proton energy and beam parameters, Doppler-shifted nonthermal L alpha emission is a useful observational diagnostic of the presence of 10 keV to 10 MeV superthermal proton beams in the solar flare chromosphere

Infusion extractor

This invention relates to an apparatus and method of removing desirable constituents from an infusible material by infusion extraction. A piston operating in a first chamber draws a solvent into the first chamber where it may be heated, and then moves the heated solvent into a second chamber containing the infusible material, where infusion extraction takes place. The piston then moves the solvent containing the extract through a filter into the first chamber, leaving the extraction residue in the second chamber. The method is applicable to operation in low or micro-gravity environments