Marine Corps Leadership Lessons for the Workplace: A Case Study

The United States Marine Corps is a military organization and institution recognized for the past 236 years as the nation’s finest fighting force. Their structure, traditions, and approach to leadership are emulated worldwide as the model for military excellence. Although a military and government entity subject to bureaucracy, the Marines always seem to operate in the most efficient and effective manner possible. When the management principals, core values, planning, and decision making processes of the Marines are applied at different levels of the civilian business world, can cultural change occur resulting in a highly efficient and effective work environment? The challenge of this field project is to provide some recommendations that may or may not work at the plant, which is a real business unit that provides high rate, low technology products for the U.S. military at a local federal facility

DYRK1A haploinsufficiency causes a new recognizable syndrome with microcephaly, intellectual disability, speech impairment, and distinct facies

Dual-specificity tyrosine-(Y)-phosphorylation-regulated kinase 1 A (DYRK1A ) is a highly conserved gene located in the Down syndrome critical region. It has an important role in early development and regulation of neuronal proliferation. Microdeletions of chromosome 21q22.12q22.3 that include DYRK1A (21q22.13) are rare and only a few pathogenic single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) in the DYRK1A gene have been described, so as of yet, the landscape of DYRK1A disruptions and their associated phenotype has not been fully explored. We have identified 14 individuals with de novo heterozygous variants of DYRK1A; five with microdeletions, three with small insertions or deletions (INDELs) and six with deleterious SNVs. The analysis of our cohort and comparison with published cases reveals that phenotypes are consistent among individuals with the 21q22.12q22.3 microdeletion and those with translocation, SNVs, or INDELs within DYRK1A. All individuals shared congenital microcephaly at birth, intellectual disability, developmental delay, severe speech impairment, short stature, and distinct facial features. The severity of the microcephaly varied from −2 SD to −5 SD. Seizures, structural brain abnormalities, eye defects, ataxia/broad-based gait, intrauterine growth restriction, minor skeletal abnormalities, and feeding difficulties were present in two-thirds of all affected individuals. Our study demonstrates that haploinsufficiency of DYRK1A results in a new recognizable syndrome, which should be considered in individuals with Angelman syndrome-like features and distinct facial features. Our report represents the largest cohort of individuals with DYRK1A disruptions to date, and is the first attempt to define consistent genotype–phenotype correlations among subjects with 21q22.13 microdeletions and DYRK1A SNVs or small INDELs