New Offering: Essentials of Management Leadership Program (EMLP)

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Newswise — The newest addition to the Tuck Executive Education portfolio, Essentials of Management Leadership Program (EMLP), is designed to develop effective leaders in general management. The immersive five-day program provides successful functional managers and new middle managers with an integrated view of the fundamentals of business, strategy and leadership.

In explaining the rationale for creating this new program, faculty director William Joyce explains, “There is no shortage of leadership programs available today. But we discovered that offerings at other schools and corporate in-house programs often fail to address what rising middle managers really need to be successful at the next level—namely the integration of ‘soft’ leadership skills combined with a broad understanding of the ‘hard’ fundamentals of business. That’s what participants will get by working with Tuck MBA faculty in EMLP.”

Participant Profile?

The program is specifically designed for successful functional managers with 5-10 years management experience. Participants have just taken on or are about to assume broader middle management responsibilities.

EMLP is also appropriate for technical professionals with scientific, engineering, technology, R&D, project management, healthcare management and other technical backgrounds who are transferring to broader management.

Program Takeaways

Learn the hard skills of business, strategy and finance combined with the softer skills of leadership, including how to influence others in the organization without direct authority
Become a more effective leader by moving beyond functional expertise towards executing on the broader objectives of the organization to make a bigger impact.

Who are the faculty teaching in EMLP?

The same faculty who have made Tuck’s MBA program among the world’s highest ranked also teach in the Essentials of Management Leadership Program. They are highly accessible during the program and care deeply about helping participants develop their business acumen and self-awareness as a leader.

William “Bill” Joyce is the program’s faculty director. An expert on strategy and organizational design, Bill is joined by Tuck’s top faculty in the areas of leadership, influence, finance, operations, marketing and strategy.

See the full faculty list.
See program details.
Dates and Location

EMLP will be held November 17-22 at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, in Hanover, NH. For more information, please visit the program website or contact us.

Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management in the country and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Tuck remains distinctive among the world's great business schools by combining human scale with global reach, rigorous coursework with experiences requiring teamwork, and valued traditions with innovation.

New Study Indicates Risk of Amazon Rainforest Dieback Due to Global Warming is Higher than Previously Projected

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Newswise — (BOSTON) A new study co-authored by Boston University Professor of Earth & Environment Ranga Myneni suggests the southern portion of the Amazon rainforest is at a much higher risk of dieback due to climate change than projections made in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If severe enough, the loss of rainforest could cause the release of large volumes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It could also disrupt plant and animal communities in one of the regions of highest biodiversity in the world.

Using ground-based rainfall measurements from the last three decades, the researchers found that since 1979, the dry season in southern Amazonia has lasted about a week longer per decade. At the same time, the annual fire season has become longer. According to the study, the most likely explanation for the lengthening dry season is global warming.

“The dry season over the southern Amazon is already marginal for maintaining rainforest,” says Rong Fu, co-author and professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences Fu. “At some point, if it becomes too long, the rainforest will reach a tipping point.”

The new results are in stark contrast to forecasts made by climate models used by the IPCC. Even under future scenarios in which atmospheric greenhouse gases rise dramatically, the models project the dry season in the southern Amazon to be only a few to ten days longer by the end of the century and therefore the risk of climate change-induced rainforest dieback should be relatively low.

The report appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The length of the dry season in the southern Amazon is the most important climate condition controlling the rainforest,” says Fu. “If the dry season is too long, the rainforest will not survive.”

To see why the length of dry season is such a limiting factor, imagine there is heavier than usual rainfall during the wet season. The soil can only hold so much water and the rest runs off. The water stored in the soil at the end of the wet season is all that the rainforest trees have to last them through the dry season. The longer the dry season lasts, regardless of how wet the wet season was, the more stressed the trees become and the more susceptible they are to fire.

The researchers say the most likely explanation for the lengthening dry season in the southern Amazon in recent decades is human-caused greenhouse warming which inhibits rainfall in two ways: First, it makes it harder for warm, dry air near the surface to rise up and freely mix with cool, moist air above. And second, it blocks cold front incursions from outside the tropics that could trigger rainfall. The climate models used by the IPCC do a poor job representing these processes, which might explain why they project only a slightly longer Amazonian dry season, says Fu.

The Amazon rainforest normally removes the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but during a severe drought in 2005, it released 1 petagram of carbon (about one tenth of annual human emissions) to the atmosphere.

“The more severe 2010 drought impacted twice the forested area than the 2005 drought and could have likely resulted in substantial carbon loss from the forests,” says Myneni, who has previously studied these droughts with NASA satellite sensor data.

Myneni and his colleagues estimate that if dry seasons continue to lengthen at just half the rate of recent decades, the Amazon drought of 2005 could become the norm, rather than the exception, by the end of this century.

Some scientists have speculated that the combination of longer dry seasons, higher surface temperatures and more fragmented forests due to ongoing human-caused deforestation could eventually convert much of southern Amazonia from rainforest to savanna.

Earlier studies have shown that human-caused deforestation in the Amazon can alter rainfall patterns. But the researchers didn’t see a strong signal of deforestation in the pattern of increasing dry season length. The dry season length increase was most pronounced in the southwestern Amazon while the most intense deforestation occurred in the southeastern Amazon.

Because the northwestern Amazon has much higher rainfall and a shorter dry season than the southern Amazon, the researchers think it is much less vulnerable to climate change.

The co-authors of this study include Rong Fu, Lei Yin, Robert Dickinson, Lei Huang and Sudip Chakraborty at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences; Wenhong Li at Duke University; Paola A. Arias at Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia; Katia Fernandes at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Brant Liebmann at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); Rosie Fisher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Ranga Myneni at Boston University.

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (AGS 0937400) and NOAA Climate Program Office Modeling, Analysis, Prediction and Projection Program (NA10OAAR4310157) and the NASA Earth Science Division.

Note to Reporters: A preprint of the article is available to journalists on the following secure reporters-only web site: http://www.eurekalert.org/pio/pnas.php

About Boston University—Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized private research university with more than 30,000 students participating in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. As Boston University’s largest academic division, the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences is the heart of the BU experience with a global reach that enhances the University’s reputation for teaching and research. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.

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Geographic Location May Help Explain Why Hispanics Face Disparities in Kidney Transplantation

 

• Hispanics were just as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be put on the kidney transplant waitlist.
• Once waitlisted, Hispanics were less likely to receive a transplant from a deceased donor. This disparity was largely explained by differences in patient blood type and regional variability of organ supply among organ procurement organizations across the country.

More than 70,000 Americans are placed on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, but fewer than 18,000 receive a transplant per year.

Newswise — Washington, DC (October 10, 2013) — In the United States, Hispanics with kidney failure are less likely than non-Hispanic whites to receive a kidney transplant largely due to their blood type and because of where they live, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings highlight the need to implement new deceased donor organ allocation policies that distribute organs over wider geographic areas to help reduce barriers to transplantation for Hispanics.

Hispanics represent the largest minority group in the United States and have an increased risk for developing kidney failure compared with non-Hispanic whites. Prior studies have shown that Hispanics were less likely to be placed on the transplant waiting list, experienced longer waiting times, or were less likely to receive a kidney transplant compared with non-Hispanic whites. Cristina Maria Arce, MD (now at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center) and her former colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine sought to study these issues further by analyzing data from the US Renal Data System, the national registry of individuals with kidney failure. The investigators identified 417,801 Caucasians who initiated dialysis from 1995 to 2007 and were followed through 2008.

Among the major findings:
• Hispanics were just as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be put on the kidney transplant waitlist.
• Once waitlisted, Hispanics were 21% less likely to receive a transplant from a deceased donor. But this disparity was largely explained by differences in patient blood type and regional variability of organ supply among organ procurement organizations across the country.

“The main barriers after placement on the waitlist include the tendency for Hispanics to reside in regions with organ procurement organizations characterized by longer median waiting times as well as the higher likelihood for Hispanics to have blood type O, which further complicates organ allocations due to fewer ABO-compatible deceased donors,” explained Dr. Arce. “To overcome the geographic disparities that Hispanics encounter in the path to transplantation, organ allocation policy revisions are needed to improve donor organ equity.”

Study co-authors include Benjamin A. Goldstein, PhD, Aya A. Mitani, Colin R. Lenihan, and Wolfgang C. Winkelmayer, MD, ScD.

Disclosures: Wolfgang Winkelmayer reports having served as a scientific advisor or consultant to Affymax, Amgen, Bayer, Fibrogen, and GlaxoSmithKline.

The article, entitled “Differences in Access to Kidney Transplantation between Hispanic and non-Hispanic Whites by Geographic Location in the United States,” will appear online at http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/ on October 10, 2013, doi: 10.2215/CJN01560213.

The content of this article does not reflect the views or opinions of The American Society of Nephrology (ASN). Responsibility for the information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the author(s). ASN does not offer medical advice. All content in ASN publications is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, drug interactions, or adverse effects. This content should not be used during a medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. Please consult your doctor or other qualified health care provider if you have any questions about a medical condition, or before taking any drug, changing your diet or commencing or discontinuing any course of treatment. Do not ignore or delay obtaining professional medical advice because of information accessed through ASN. Call 911 or your doctor for all medical emergencies.

Founded in 1966, and with more than 14,000 members, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) leads the fight against kidney disease by educating health professionals, sharing new knowledge, advancing research, and advocating the highest quality care for patients.

Teaching and learning as Professor H

 

 with 8.7 million views and counting - was produced by a group of students who wanted to have fun with Hafensteiner general chemistry class. Prof. H, as it is called Hafensteiner, agreed to give students five minutes (15 didn't) at the beginning of the first class of the year. Someone posing as Hafensteiner established in the law (non-cellular and not portable) and warned them of the high failure rate, at the same time destroy their hopes of entering medical school. Once the fear had set, the real Prof. H appeared, demanded to know who was the charlatan and assumed control of the intruder, to the relieved applause of his students.

Prof. H uses that moment to emphasize the difference between the stereotyped concept of the experience of the University Science and his class.

"Introducing and taunts from some very common at the beginning of the class fears, I was able to clarify things," said Hafensteiner. "My class is structured so that they can have success."

Even before the start of the first Conference, it is immediately apparent to newcomers Hafensteiner general chemistry class is different to everything they had in high school. For starters, instead of the typical students from 20 to 30 in a high school classroom, Prof. H class has ten times as many.

Hafensteiner is that their students are making a massive transition from high school aware - where there may be a lot of hand through their courses - to the University of Rochester, where they hope to identify the resources needed to tackle the problems alone.

And Hafensteiner perfectly understands that many of his students have a chemical good experience in high school, even with lots of hand in a smaller class.

"Ninety -nine percent of students who say that they hated secondary chemistry actually admit that you liked the teacher, that has nothing to do with the material," Hafensteiner said. "The challenge is to give students the opportunity to appreciate the science."

Prof. H uses many tools and strategies adopted by other teachers. Works hard to learn the names of the students, applies the material life for every day of course, cool in their classes each semester and employs > clickers to obtain immediate feedback from the students in class discussions and problems. But in the end, success of Hafensteiner as a teacher can reduce access.

"It is the type of teacher that is very accessible," said Sharath Koorathota, a former Professor of Hafensteiner and one of the producers of deception video Student Assistant. "He designed his lectures in a way that supports those who take chemistry for the first time, while it continues to defy everyone in the class."

Hafensteiner holds office three hours each week with anywhere from five to 15 students. Non-office hours as much as they are mini-clases that allow to see it approaching if students are grasping the material.

Prof. H is clearly making a difference. The University of Rochester last spring named Hafensteiner students association teacher of the year in the natural sciences, citing their support for the students and their "ability to feel young any kind".

"Yes, I can concentrate on making the three best students scientific fantastic," said Hafensteiner. "But if that's all what I did, chemical, as a discipline, he would die. One of the most valuable things I can do is make sure that all my students have an appreciation for the field".

Physical Attractiveness Impacts One's Memory

 — A study at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth has found that the attractiveness of others can have an impact on how much we lie or misrepresent and to the extent that we believe those lies/misrepresentations.

For example, Harry gets a call from a political polling organization and is asked for his opinion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He gives it the lowest possible rating. A few weeks later, Harry meets an attractive woman named Sally online. During their conversation, Sally mentions that she answered the same question by the same polling organization and expressed high approval of Obamacare. She then asks “What approval rating did you give Obamacare when they asked you?”

This question poses a dilemma for Harry. Should he tell the truth or should he shade the truth? To the extent that Harry finds Sally very attractive and is motivated to create a positive impression, he might shade the truth about his past behavior by claiming to have expressed at least moderate approval of Obamacare. What, if any, effect would this misrepresentation have on Harry’s memory for how he actually answered on the day he was contacted by the polling organization?

“What we know is that people will embellish or distort facts when telling stories, which causes them to oftentimes remember the lies more so than the truth,” said Charles Lord, professor of psychology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “Research has also showed us that people tell others what they want to hear. In this case, Harry will lie to impress Sally, and he is also more likely to fool himself into believing the lie.”

Researchers asked single individuals if they agreed or disagreed with instituting “comprehensive mandatory exams” for graduating seniors using a 1-10 scale. A total of 44 individuals did not want to institute mandatory exams. Those respondents were then led to believe they would be meeting a member of the opposite sex who wanted to institute mandatory exams by scoring those a nine on the survey. They also were shown a photo of this person and asked to report on a 1-7 scale if they found their partner “physically attractive and wanted to get along with and make a good impression on this partner.”

Participants were then asked to complete a profile to be sent to their partner before an in-person meeting answering the same question about “comprehensive mandatory exams.” Researchers found there was a correlation between the attractiveness of the partner and those warming to the idea of “comprehensive mandatory exams.”

Researchers then retested students with some of the same questions they had taken two weeks earlier by asking respondents to remember what they had said in the initial survey.

“Participants with relatively attractive potential partners remembered giving more positive initial survey responses than participants with relatively unattractive potential partners,” said Lord.

Researchers then tested 117 additional undergraduate students letting them see profile pictures and foreknowledge of how those students responded. They were told they would be partnered with these individuals later in the course. Findings showed that people with perceived “attractive partners” aligned their views more closely with the partner than those with unattractive partners.

“In both experiments we found that knowing the other person’s positive evaluation in advance led participants to misrepresent their own previous evaluations, and this misrepresentation, in turn, altered memories for participants’ own actual past actions,” said Lord.

Sara E. Brady, assistant professor at Charleston Southern University in Charleston, SC is also a lead author on the paper.

These findings appear in the forthcoming edition of the Journal of Social Cognition.

University of Utah Awarded $20.4 Million From NIH to Advance Translational Research in Medicine

 

Newswise — For parents whose infants have been diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, comprehending what the rare condition means for their child’s life can be devastating. SMA is a progressive, debilitating and potentially fatal disease of the motor neurons caused by the absence of the survival motor neuron gene, or SMN1. It’s a condition that occurs in one in every 6,000 live births.

But researchers at the University of Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science are giving parents dealing with the heartbreak of seeing a child diagnosed with the condition something important: Hope for a cure. Researchers have made strides in understanding SMA, everyday coming steps closer to finding an effective treatment for the genetic condition. Their work is only one example of potentially life-changing research taking place daily at the Center.

The Center taps into the University of Utah’s strengths in genetics and bioinformatics to translate promising bench science into practices that improve health. It serves as an academic home for clinical and translational research, developing innovative health services for the community and health researchers, and training a new generation of clinical and translational investigators.

The Center’s track record of success this month has earned it a $20.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that will allow it to provide support for all aspects of translational research over the next five years. The University of Utah is just one of 15 institutions in the U.S. selected this month to receive an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award or CTSA.

“This award is important to continue our work in translational science. This funding will help scientists and physicians train those who may be responsible for tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs,” said Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., MBA and University of Utah senior vice president for health sciences.

“We’ve already made a number of important research discoveries in our Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and the NIH’s continued support of our facility shows their confidence in our commitment to keep making strides in several research areas,” said Lee, also dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of University of Utah Health Care.

Donald McClain, M.D. Ph.D., and Carrie Byington, M.D., —the Center’s directors —said the new NIH funding will help the University of Utah to continue to be an important voice in the broader discussion of improving the quality of health care while reducing costs.

"The importance of this Center to the State of Utah is that it brings resources together that support the full range of clinical research, from basic discovery science to how research findings are best implemented into the practices of our community physicians. The Center facilitates the communication among all of our stakeholders, so that investigators making basic discoveries can speak with experts in turning those discoveries into new cures or diagnostics, and they in turn can speak to experts in partnering with industry to get the products to market,” said McClain, who besides overseeing the Center, serves as Associate Vice President for Clinical and Translational Science, the Bettilyon Chair in Diabetes Research and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Biochemistry at the University of Utah.

“In this partnership among Intermountain Healthcare, the Veterans Administration, the Utah Department of Health, and the University of Utah, we can ensure that advances made across the entire nation are brought to the entire population of Utah rapidly and safely,” he added.

Byington noted one of the research initiatives linked to the Center is a planning grant to develop a National Research Mentoring Network for those under-represented in medicine. The mentoring network represents a novel approach to increase the national capacity for biomedical science through the recruitment and training of the best and brightest candidates from all backgrounds. Byington serves as principal investigator of the planning award given to support the development of the network through the entire CTSA consortium of 60 sites.

“Participation in the CTSA consortium allows Utah to address some of the most important issues in biomedical science and to collaborate with some of the best academic health centers in the U.S.,” said Byington, the H.A. and Edna Benning Presidential Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development and Vice Chair for the Research Enterprise, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah.

The NIH started the CTSA program in 2006 as a tool in the health care reform movement to provide higher quality and more affordable health care to people. The University of Utah receiving its first round of CTSA funding in 2008, when it joined other institutions across the country in trying to find research breakthroughs that could change outcomes in patient care more rapidly move breakthroughs in basic research to breakthroughs in patient care.

The University of Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science consists of eight core areas including biomedical informatics; clinical services; community outreach and collaboration; patient-centered outcomes research methods; recruitment, retention and safety; research education, training and career development; study design and biostatistics and translational technologies and resources.

Besides researching conditions like SMA, the Center for Clinical and Translational Science has worked on literally hundreds of protocols, including studies related to obesity and cancer, said McClain.
By 2018, the Center has a number of goals it wants to meet, including:
• Increasing the quality, quantity, safety, efficiency and impact of translational research for all conditions.
• Providing resources and services to support and speed clinical and translational research of all kinds.
• Training, mentoring and supporting the next generation of translational investigators to become principal investigators and productive faculty members.
• Creating a leadership structure that represents all aspects of translational science.
• Engaging in a process of continuous evaluation, improvement and innovation in all of these areas.
• Proving special expertise to a CTSA consortium in the areas of human genetics, genotype/phenotype correlation, health services research including comparative effectiveness, medical device innovation, and the development of electronic health records as tools for medical care and research.

 

 

Scientists Identify Protein Linking Exercise to Brain Health

Newswise — BOSTON — A protein that is increased by endurance exercise has been isolated and given to non-exercising mice, in which it turned on genes that promote brain health and encourage the growth of new nerves involved in learning and memory, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

The findings, reported in the journal Cell Metabolism, help explain the well-known capacity of endurance exercise to improve cognitive function, particularly in older people. If the protein can be made in a stable form and developed into a drug, it might lead to improved therapies for cognitive decline in older people and slow the toll of neurodegenerative diseases such Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, according to the investigators.

“What is exciting is that a natural substance can be given in the bloodstream that can mimic some of the effects of endurance exercise on the brain,” said Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, of Dana-Farber and HMS. He is co-senior author of the publication with Michael E. Greenberg, PhD, chair of neurobiology at HMS.

The Spiegelman group previously reported that the protein, called FNDC5, is produced by muscular exertion and is released into the bloodstream as a variant called irisin. In the new research, endurance exercise – mice voluntarily running on a wheel for 30 days – increased the activity of a metabolic regulatory molecule, PGC-1a, in muscles, which spurred a rise in FNDC5 protein. The increase of FNDC5 in turn boosted the expression of a brain-health protein, BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic protein) in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory.

It has been found that exercise stimulates BDNF in the hippocampus, one of only two areas of the adult brain that can generate new nerve cells. BDNF promotes development of new nerves and synapses – connections between nerves that allow learning and memory to be stored – and helps preserve the survival of brain cells.

How exercise raises BDNF activity in the brain wasn’t known; the new findings linking exercise, PGC-1a, FNDC5 and BDNF provide a molecular pathway for the effect, although Spiegelman and his colleagues suggest there are probably others.

Having shown that FNDC5 is a molecular link between exercise and increased BDNF in the brain, the scientists asked whether artificially increasing FNDC5 in the absence of exercise would have the same effect. They used a harmless virus to deliver the protein to mice through the bloodstream, in hopes the FNDC5 could reach the brain and raise BDNF activity. Seven days later, they examined the mouse brains and observed a significant increase in BDNF in the hippocampus.

“Perhaps the most exciting result overall is that peripheral deliver of FNDC5 with adenoviral vectors is sufficient to induce central expression of Bdnf and other genes with potential neuroprotective functions or those involved in learning and memory,” the authors said. Spiegelman cautioned that further research is needed to determine whether giving FNDC5 actually improves cognitive function in the animals. The scientists also aren’t sure whether the protein that got into the brain is FNDC5 itself, or irisin, or perhaps another variant of the protein.

Spiegelman said that development of irisin as a drug will require creating a more stable form of the protein.

The first author of the report is Christiane Wrann, PhD, in the Spiegelman lab.
The research was supported by the JPB Foundation and National Institutes of Health (DK31405 and DK90861).

About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It provides adult cancer care with Brigham and Women’s Hospital as Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and it provides pediatric care with Boston Children’s Hospital as Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Dana-Farber is the top ranked cancer center in New England, according to U.S. News & World Report, and one of the largest recipients among independent hospitals of National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health grant funding. Follow Dana-Farber on Facebook and on Twitter.