Examining How Asian American Women Experience Authority In The Workplace

There is limited empirical research on how Asian American women interpret situations with workplace authority and how those conceptualizations of authority came to be. This qualitative study examines how Asian American women experience authority in the workplace. I draw from 15 semi-structured interviews with Asian American women to identify the cultural underpinnings that show how this group experiences authority in the workplace. The themes suggest that early experiences of authority affect how Asian American women respond to authority in the workplace. The results show how Asian American women in the study were influenced by parents, respected authority, and experienced conflict with authority figures. Moreover, the interviews show that understandings of authority influence how participants in the study interacted with authority in the workplace. By investigating negative and positive experiences with authority in the workplace, I draw themes on how Asian American women in this study interpret the actions of authority figures. Lastly, I identify how this group makes meaning of their own authority in the workplace to reveal findings about their confidence and decision-making process. This study highlights the lived experiences of Asian American women in the workplace. Overall, the findings offer another perspective of authority in the workplace from the vantage points of Asian American women. Acknowledging cultural differences will contribute to the development of a more diverse and inclusive workforce

Human pluripotent stem cell-derived β cells: Truly immature islet β cells for type 1 diabetes therapy?

A century has passed since the Nobel Prize winning discovery of insulin, which still remains the mainstay treatment for type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) to this day. True to the words of its discoverer Sir Frederick Banting, “insulin is not a cure for diabetes, it is a treatment”, millions of people with T1DM are dependent on daily insulin medications for life. Clinical donor islet transplantation has proven that T1DM is curable, however due to profound shortages of donor islets, it is not a mainstream treatment option for T1DM. Human pluripotent stem cell derived insulin-secreting cells, pervasively known as stem cell-derived β cells (SC-β cells), are a promising alternative source and have the potential to become a T1DM treatment through cell replacement therapy. Here we briefly review how islet β cells develop and mature in vivo and several types of reported SC-β cells produced using different ex vivo protocols in the last decade. Although some markers of maturation were expressed and glucose stimulated insulin secretion was shown, the SC-β cells have not been directly compared to their in vivo counterparts, generally have limited glucose response, and are not yet fully matured. Due to the presence of extra-pancreatic insulin-expressing cells, and ethical and technological issues, further clarification of the true nature of these SC-β cells is required

An Efficient Fill Estimation Algorithm for Sparse Matrices and Tensors in Blocked Formats

Tensors, linear-algebraic extensions of matrices in arbitrary dimensions, have numerous applications in computer science and computational science. Many tensors are sparse, containing more than 90% zero entries. Efficient algorithms can leverage sparsity to do less work, but the irregular locations of the nonzero entries pose challenges to performance engineers. Many tensor operations such as tensor-vector multiplications can be sped up substantially by breaking the tensor into equally sized blocks (only storing blocks which contain nonzeros) and performing operations in each block using carefully tuned code. However, selecting the best block size is computationally challenging. Previously, Vuduc et al. defined the fill of a sparse tensor to be the number of stored entries in the blocked format divided by the number of nonzero entries, and showed that the fill can be used as an effective heuristic to choose a good block size. However, they gave no accuracy bounds for their method for estimating the fill, and it is vulnerable to adversarial examples. In this paper, we present a sampling-based method for finding a (1 + epsilon)-approximation to the fill of an order N tensor for all block sizes less than B, with probability at least 1 - delta, using O(B^(2N) log(B^N / delta) / epsilon^2) samples for each block size. We introduce an efficient routine to sample for all B^N block sizes at once in O(N B^N) time. We extend our concentration bounds to a more efficient bound based on sampling without replacement, using the recent Hoeffding-Serfling inequality. We then implement our algorithm and compare our scheme to that of Vuduc, as implemented in the Optimized Sparse Kernel Interface (OSKI) library. We find that our algorithm provides faster estimates of the fill at all accuracy levels, providing evidence that this is both a theoretical and practical improvement. Our code is available under the BSD 3-clause license at https://github.com/peterahrens/FillEstimation

Emotional intelligence and conflict management styles

Purpose – This paper aims to use a multi-level approach to examine the effects of emotional intelligence (EI) components on conflict management styles of Chinese managers when the respondents were in conflicts with their subordinates, peers or superiors. Design/methodology/approach – The primary research was conducted in Dalian, China, via a personal survey resulting in 885 usable observations for analysis. EI was measured using the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS; Wong and Law, 2002), which is made up of 16 questions measuring four dimensions. The conflict management component was measured via Rahim’s (1983) five conflict management styles, which are avoidance, dominating, collaboration, compromise and integration. Findings – The data analyses suggested that managers at different levels possess different EI and adopt different conflict management styles when dealing with their subordinates, peers and superiors. Specifically, when subordinates were involved in a conflict, junior managers and female managers were more likely to use the dominating style, while when peers were involved in a conflict, male managers were more likely to use the dominating style. When peers were involved in a conflict, managers working in public sectors were more likely to adopt the integrating, avoiding, obliging and compromising style. The Chinese managers were found to regulate their emotions and use of their emotions effectively in conflict with their peers and supervisors and thus they tended to adopt the avoiding, integrating and obliging style. Self-emotions appraisal and others emotions appraisal were significant to the adoption of the obliging style to handle conflict with their peers and supervisors. Use of emotions effectively was significant for the Chinese managers adopting the compromising style in conflicts with their peers, superiors and subordinates. Research limitations/implications – The authors could only reach employees working and living in one city, which affects the generalizability of the paper. Practical implications – Training should be provided tomanagers at different levels on the awareness of the impact of EI on conflict management at workplace. Originality/value – There is little existing research on how employees across different levels within organisations in China moderate their EI according to the party they are interacting with. The objective of this paper is to stimulate further debate on the matter, thereby improving the understanding of EI moderation

Localized JNK signaling regulates organ size during development.

A fundamental question of biology is what determines organ size. Despite demonstrations that factors within organs determine their sizes, intrinsic size control mechanisms remain elusive. Here we show that Drosophila wing size is regulated by JNK signaling during development. JNK is active in a stripe along the center of developing wings, and modulating JNK signaling within this stripe changes organ size. This JNK stripe influences proliferation in a non-canonical, Jun-independent manner by inhibiting the Hippo pathway. Localized JNK activity is established by Hedgehog signaling, where Ci elevates dTRAF1 expression. As the dTRAF1 homolog, TRAF4, is amplified in numerous cancers, these findings provide a new mechanism for how the Hedgehog pathway could contribute to tumorigenesis, and, more importantly, provides a new strategy for cancer therapies. Finally, modulation of JNK signaling centers in developing antennae and legs changes their sizes, suggesting a more generalizable role for JNK signaling in developmental organ size control

Improving Midstream Urine Collection for Urine Culture through the Use of a Novel Device, FlipCatch

Background : A midstream, clean-catch urine sample is the gold standard for diagnosing urinary tract infections and determining treatment. The current method of collection is not standardized, frustrating both patients and providers. The current method results in a high rate of contaminated samples (30-40%), which often need to be repeated in order to obtain a diagnosis and antibiotic susceptibility data. A design project was conducted in order to create a more effective urine collection device with the goals of decreasing contamination and improving patient and provider experience. Methods : We conducted interviews of patients, allied health professionals, physicians, and clinical microbiologists involved in the urine collection process in order to gain insight into current systemic flaws in urine collection (n=18). A set of design criteria were established based on interview feedback. Following conceptualization and rough prototyping, feasible designs were 3D printed in PLA (polylactic acid) filament and tested for functionality using water. Users were asked to urinate in the final design and rate its comfort and ease of use. Results : FlipCatch is a gravity-fed urine collection device featuring an ergonomic funnel, which helps guide the stream onto a cellulose sponge mounted to a rotating arm. Once the sample is collected, staff can utilize the Vacutainer® receptacle for sample processing. User testing of the device was limited due to the small number of prototypes able to be 3D printed, but the feedback was positive. Conclusions : FlipCatch could solve many of the current problems with urine collection, yet significant improvements still need be implemented in order for the device to be feasible. Mechanical optimization and more detailed financial analyses with updated manufacturing costs will be needed. In the future, a pilot study at Jefferson could be used to measure contamination rate and user satisfaction in FlipCatch compared to current practice

Combining Model Checking and Discrete-Event Supervisor Synthesis

We present an approach to facilitate the design of provably correct concurrent systems by recasting recent work that uses discrete-event supervisor synthesis to automatically generate concurrency control code in Promela and combine it with model checking in Spin. This approach consists of the possibly repeated execution of three steps: manual preparation, automatic synthesis, and semi-automatic analysis. Given a concurrent Promela program C devoid of any concurrency control and an informal specification E_in , the preparation step is assumed to yield a formal specification E of the allowed system behaviours and two versions of C: C_e to identify the specification-relevant events in C and enable supervisor synthesis, and C_e,a to introduce “checkable redundancy” and used during the analysis step to locate bugs in: the specification formalization E, the event markup in C_e, or the implementation of the synthesis. The result is supervised Promela code C_sup that is more likely to be correct with respect to E and E_in. The approach is illustrated with an example. A prototype tool implementing the approach is described