For many years, leadership operations within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have utilized a primarily hierarchical approach. In the present effort, we investigated the ...leadership needs and considerations given the increased interest in and potential for long-duration space exploration. Specifically, it is argued that a collective leadership approach in which leadership is shared and distributed based on expertise would be beneficial for these types of missions. Interviews were conducted with eleven subject matter experts with wide-ranging experience in NASA and its missions. A mixed-methods analytic approach applied to these interviews provided support for the viability of a collective leadership framework. Implications for NASA and other similar organizational contexts are discussed.
Constraints often inhibit creative problem-solving. This study examined the impact of training strategies for managing constraints on creative problem-solving. Undergraduates, 218 in all, were asked ...to work through 1 to 4 self-paced instructional programs focused on constraint management strategies. The quality, originality, and elegance of solutions to social innovation problems were assessed. It was found that providing training in managing resource constraints was generally valuable. For talented individuals, providing training in managing user skill constraints also proved valuable. The implications of these findings for training intended to improve creative thinking are discussed.
This study uses a low-fidelity simulation to test the effect superiors can have on the leadership style and cognition of their subordinates who also are leaders. These leaders within the ...organization, often referred to as middle managers, occupy an important, albeit overlooked position within an organization. In order to emphasize the leadership that occurs at the middle levels of management the term ‘embedded leader’ is used. Using a sample of 224 undergraduates, three variables were manipulated to examine their effects on participant sensemaking, confidence, and participative leadership. The variables manipulated were the severity of individual level consequences (high vs. low), the severity of organizational consequences (high vs. low), and the superior's motivational strategy (coercive vs. supportive vs. passive style). It was found that a leader's superior can influence their leadership behaviors in a complex manner. Participant sensemaking was higher when their superior emphasized low levels of individual (or personal) consequences. Participative leadership was higher when the supervisor framed organizational level consequences as being high. Findings for participant confidence were complex, but generally suggest that one's superiors can promote or hinder confidence in a variety of situations.
Given the prevalence of online media today, credibility continues to be a popular subject of empirical research. However, studies examining the effects of discrediting strategies are rare. This issue ...is significant given the popularity of online media and the ease of such sources to spread misinformation. Therefore, the present study examines the effects of attacking the expertise and trustworthiness of a proponent of a major social issue. Results showed that support as well specific combinations of discrediting attack strategies significantly reduced message board readers' perceptions of the proponent's credibility. In addition, attacks on either the proponent's expertise or trustworthiness resulted in a reduced likelihood of readers taking action with respect to the issue.
We report two sisters with extensive bilateral periventricular haemorrhagic infarction (PVHI) causing cerebral palsy (CP). The older sister presented at 20 months with cortical visual blindness, ...spastic diplegia, and purpura fulminans. The younger sister presented aged 3 days old with apnoeas and multifocal seizures. She subsequently had global developmental delay, cortical visual blindness, spastic quadriplegia, epilepsy, and purpura fulminans at age 2 years. Neuroimaging of both siblings showed bilateral PVHI consistent with bilateral cerebral intramedullary venous thrombosis occurring at under 28 weeks’ gestation for the older sister and around time of birth for the younger sister. At latest follow‐up, the older sister (13y) has spastic diplegia at Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level II, and the younger sister (10y) has spastic quadriplegia at GMFCS level IV. Both sisters showed partial quantitative reduction in plasma protein C antigen and severe qualitative reduction in plasma protein C anticoagulant activity. They were heterozygous for two independent mutations in the protein C gene (PROC). There was no other risk factor for CP. To our knowledge, this is the first family reported with compound heterozygous PROC mutations as the likely genetic cause of familial CP. This report adds to the list of known monogenic causes of CP.
•We report rare monoallelic variants of THPO that alter intracellular trafficking and diminish thrombopoietin secretion.•Affected cases have autosomal-dominant thrombocytopenia but no other ...hematological features.
We report here that shape-from-shading stimuli evoked a long-latency contextual pop-out response in V1 and V2 neurons of macaque monkeys, particularly after the monkeys had used the stimuli in a ...behavioral task. The magnitudes of the pop-out responses were correlated to the monkeys' behavioral performance, suggesting that these signals are neural correlates of perceptual pop-out saliency. The signals changed with the animal's behavioral adaptation to stimulus contingencies, indicating that perceptual saliency is also a function of experience and behavioral relevance. The evidence that higher-order stimulus attributes and task experience can influence early visual processing supports the notion that perceptual computation is an interactive and plastic process involving multiple cortical areas.
We determined the TP53 and codon 12 KRAS mutations in lung tumors from 24 nonsmokers whose tumors were associated with exposure to smoky coal. Among any tumors studied previously, these showed the ...highest percentage of mutations that (a) were G --> T transversions at either KRAS (86%) or TP53 (76%), (b) clustered at the G-rich codons 153-158 of TP53 (33%), and (c) had 100% of the guanines of the G --> T transversions on the nontranscribed strand. This mutation spectrum is consistent with an exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are the primary component of the smoky coal emissions. These results show that mutations in the TP53 and KRAS genes can reflect a specific environmental exposure.
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