When Leaders Are Hired for Talent but Fired for Not Fitting In 029-08

Over and over again, organizations are unable to appoint the right leaders. According to academic estimates, the baseline for effective corporate leadership is merely 30%, while in politics, approval ratings oscillate between 25% and 40%. In America, 75% of employees report that their direct line manager is the worst part of their job, and 65% would happily take a pay cut if they could replace their boss with someone better. A recent McKinsey report suggests that fewer than 30% of organizations are able to find the right C-suite leaders, and that newly appointed executives take too long to adapt.

Although there are many reasons for this bleak state of affairs – including over-reliance on intuition at the expense of scientifically valid selection tools – a common problem is organizations’ inability to predict whether leaders will fit in with their culture. Even when organizations are good at assessing leaders’ talents (e.g., their skills, expertise, and generic leadership capabilities), they forget that an essential element of effective leadership is the congruence between leaders’ values and those of the organization, including the leaders’ team. As a result, too many leaders are (correctly) hired on talent but subsequently fired due to poor culture fit.

In our view, there are three critical errors organizations must fix in order to upgrade their selection efforts, namely:

Decode leaders’ motives and values: While expertise and experience are central to leaders’ potential, they are insufficient to predict leadership performance. In fact, even generic personality characteristics, such as integrity, people skills, curiosity, and self-awareness will fail to predict a leader’s fit to the role or organization. A proper understanding of fit must take into account the leader’s motives and values, also known as the “inside” of personality. Motives and values operate as an inner compass, dictating what the leader will like and reward, the type of culture and climate they will strive to create in their teams, and the activities they will see as meaningful and fulfilling.

For example, leaders who value tradition will have a strong sense of what is right and wrong, will prefer hierarchical organizations, and will have little tolerance of disruption and innovation – put them in a creative environment and they will struggle. On the other hand, leaders who value affiliation will have a strong desire to get along with others, will focus on building and maintaining strong interpersonal relations, and on working collaboratively. This means they will not be engaged if their role is too isolated and the company culture is overly individualistic. Finally, altruistic leaders will strive to improve other people’s lives and drive progress in the world, so they will suffer if their organizations are purely driven by profits and disinterested in having a positive social impact.

Understand their own organizational culture: Knowing a leader’s motives and values is pointless unless organizations are also able to decode their own culture. Sadly, most organizations underestimate the importance of accurately profiling their culture so they end up relying on intuitive and unrealistic ideas that say more about what they would like to be than what they actually are. This is why a large number of companies today describe themselves as “entrepreneurial,” “innovative,” “results-oriented,” or “diverse,” even when their own employees perceive a very different type of culture. Well-designed climate surveys, which crowdsource people’s views and experiences of the organizational culture, are a much better indicator of a company’s true values than the aspirational competencies curated by senior executives.

Be realistic about the new leader’s ability to actually change the culture: Although senior leaders are the main shapers of organizational culture, it is hard for newly appointed leaders to reshape the existing culture. That is not to say that organizations should give up and only hire leaders who are a good fit. In fact, moderate misfits who are charismatic and visionary are a company’s best bet for driving top-down change – but the process will be slow and tedious, and these leaders will need to have a great deal of support in order to persist and prevail. The odds of success will be slim, and some leaders may be so disruptive in their intentions that they may harm morale and productivity, or end up disrupting themselves. As Sartre noted, “only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.”

Of course, some leaders manage to perform well in virtually any context. They are able to flex or span between a range of competing competencies, which makes them more adaptive and versatile, as Rob Kaiser’s compelling research shows – but they are an exception rather than the norm. In contrast, for most people, leadership potential will be somewhat context-dependent, so there is no guarantee that a person will lead effectively just because they have been effective in a previous role or organization. Past performance is a good predictor of future performance only when the context remains the same. When it doesn’t, the focus should be on potential and the future rather than performance and the past.

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“Creative diplomacy is vital to defuse Korean crisis” 08-29

By Kevin Rudd,

Former prime minister of Australia, and  is president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York

It would be wrong to assume China would stand by if peninsula fell into conflict.

In his acclaimed book The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark wrote about how the great powers of 1914 stumbled into a pan-European war that not only destroyed much of the continent, but unleashed destructive forces that defined the global order for much of the following century.

Some of us fear that we are sleepwalking again, blindly unaware of the abyss that lies ahead. As a Chinese friend reminded me recently, war has its own logic. So too do crises. History teaches us they are both hard to stop once they start.

The greatest global flash point today is the Korean peninsula. Most analysts regard crisis and conflict over the North Korean nuclear programme as improbable. They are right. But the uncomfortable truth is that it is now becoming more possible.

There are three basic scenarios. First, China either talks the North Koreans out of their nuclear programme through politics and diplomacy. Or it forces them out of it through financial and economic sanctions, which deliver real policy change in Pyongyang. Second, the US launches a unilateral military attack on North Korean nuclear facilities to destroy or at least degrade the programme. Or third, the US adjusts to the reality of a North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles and seeks to impose some sort of regime to manage them.

From the perspective of the Trump White House, scenario one is no longer seen as viable. While some see this as US posturing, there is a calculation in Washington that the Chinese are playing for time with the Americans on North Korea, and do not have any intention of doing what is necessary to bring about a fundamental change in Pyongyang’s behaviour. There is also an emerging US view that Beijing will continue to give the impression of taking action against Pyongyang, in order to forestall any risk of unilateral US action until such time as the Americans simply have to accept North Korea as a bona fide nuclear weapons state.

On the second scenario, it would be wrong to assume the US has ruled out a unilateral strike. Whereas Japan and South Korea would oppose such action, this will not be decisive in determining any final US decision. The problem is, China believes the US is bluffing. Beijing cannot comprehend the US position, because it believes America could not afford to ignore South Korean opposition to a unilateral strike, given the probable retaliation against Seoul. China also sees it as inconceivable that the US would risk the shattering of its security alliances with Seoul and Tokyo by acting without their consent.

As for the US accepting North Korea as just another member of the nuclear club, this does not sit well at all in Washington. North Korea is not regarded as a normal state, nor has it exhibited any interest in developing a transparent nuclear doctrine. Furthermore, it has taken to issuing repeated bellicose threats against the US. The domestic backlash against allowing North Korea to acquire its long-sought after ICBM nuclear capability would be considerable, undermining Mr Trump’s concept of a “muscular” presidency.

It would also be wrong to assume that China would simply stand idly by if the peninsula degenerated into conflict. For deeply held strategic reasons, China chose not to sit out the Korean war in 1950, less than a year after the founding of Mao’s People’s Republic. Indeed it entered that war to prevent an American victory. Deep anxiety about the possibility of a US military presence on its north-eastern land border has been an abiding concern for Chinese security policy for over half a century. So we must also think about the risks of the North Korean crisis triggering a wider conflict between China and the US.

We have entered a new and dangerous period with a deeply unsettling trajectory. What then is to be done? First, Beijing needs to accept that the threat of a unilateral US strike is credible enough to warrant a change in Chinese diplomacy towards North Korea. Second, the US should be clear with Beijing about what is at stake here for China. If China succeeds in bringing about a cessation of North Korea’s nuclear programme and the destruction of its existing arsenal, the US would then accept the much discussed “grand bargain” for the peninsular, including a formal peace treaty with Pyongyang, diplomatic recognition by the US, guarantees for the regime’s future, the possible withdrawal of US forces from South Korea and the removal of sanctions.

Whether the US and China can find a creative diplomatic solution to this crisis is an open question — but one that must be answered now.

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Please also on North Korea  

North Korean doomsday weapon could kill up to 90% of Americans, experts warn experts

North Korea 'could kill almost four million people in Seoul and Tokyo with retaliatory nuclear attack' 

One miss and South Korea gets demolished, South Korea has right to dignified existence, especially when it has done no wrong. 

Time to Accept Reality and Manage a Nuclear-Armed North Korea   

Escaping from North Korea in search of freedom | Yeonmi Park Video

Brain may be far more flexible than thought 08-27

The human brain has a region of cells responsible for linking sensory cues to actions and behaviors and cataloging the link as a memory. Cells that form these links have been deemed highly stable and fixed.

Now, the findings of a Harvard Medical School (HMS) study conducted in mice challenge that model, revealing that the neurons responsible for such tasks may be less stable, yet more flexible than previously believed.

The results, published Aug. 17 in the journal Cell, cast doubt on the traditional notion that memory formation involves hardwiring information into the brain in a fixed and highly stable pattern.
The researchers say their results point to a critical plasticity in neuronal networks that ensures easier integration of new information. Such plasticity allows neuronal networks to more easily incorporate new learning, eliminating the need to form new links to separate neurons every time. Furthermore, the researchers said, once a memory is no longer needed, neurons can be more easily reassigned to other important tasks.
“Our experiments point to far less stability in neurons that link sensory cues to action than we would have expected and suggest the presence of much more flexibility, and indeed a sort of neuronal efficiency,” said study senior author Chris Harvey, an assistant professor of neurobiology at HMS. “We believe this trade-off ensures the delicate balance between the ability to incorporate new information while preserving old memories.”

The Harvard Medical School study involved experiments with mice repeatedly running through a virtual maze over the course of a month. Analyzing images of brain activity in a brain region involved in navigational decision-making, the researchers noted that neurons did not stabilize into a pattern. Instead, the set of neurons forming the mice’s maze-running memories kept changing for the duration of the study. In fact, neurons kept switching roles in the memory pattern or left it altogether, only to be replaced by other neurons.

“Individual neurons tended to have streaks where they’d do the same thing for a few days, then switch,” Harvey said. “Over the course of weeks, we began to see shifts in the overall pattern of neurons.”

The experiments are part of the research team’s ongoing efforts to unravel the mysteries of memory formation and, specifically, how the brain captures external cues and behaviors to perform recurring tasks such as navigating a space using landmarks. Imagine a person driving a familiar route to the grocery store who sees the bank and turns right at that corner without even having to think about it consciously.

To mimic that process, mice in the study were trained to run down a virtual passage — a computer-generated maze displayed on large screens in front of a treadmill — and turn right if they were given a black cue or left if they were given a white cue. Researchers imaged hundreds of neurons in the part of the brain responsible for spatial decision-making as the mice were galloping down the virtual maze.

Once the navigational links were firmly established in the mice’s brains over the course of a few weeks, the researchers expected the activity of the neurons to look the same from day to day. During maze runs that occurred within 24 hours of each other that was, indeed, the case. Neurons that activated in response to the white cue could be distinguished from neurons that activated in response to the black cue. However, over the course of several weeks the line between cues in individual neurons blurred, and the memory pattern began to drift across neurons, the researchers observed. A neuron that had been associated with the black cue would lose its specialization and be replaced by another, or it might even become associated with the white cue. This came as a surprise to the researchers.

“We were so sure that the neurons would be doing the same thing every day that we designed the study expecting to use the stable pattern as a baseline,” said study first author Laura Driscoll, a graduate student in the Neurobiology Department. “After we realized the neurons were changing roles, we had to rethink parts of the study.”

The researchers tested how the pattern changed when they added shapes as a third cue while the mice were navigating the maze. After some reassignment of individual neurons as the mice learned the new cue, the researchers found very little change to the overall activity pattern. This finding supports the idea that neuronal networks that store memories stay flexible in order to incorporate new learning, the researchers say.

The researchers hypothesize that neuronal stability may differ across various brain regions, likely depending on how often the skill or memory they encode needs to be modified. For a task like navigation, which frequently requires the brain to incorporate new information, it would make sense that the neurons remain flexible, Harvey said. However, more instinctual physical responses, such as blinking, may be hardwired with little neuronal drift over time.

The results provide a fascinating early glimpse into the complexities of memory formation, Driscoll said. To elucidate the big picture of memory formation and storage across brain regions, researchers say they hope to study other areas of the brain involved with different types of decision-making and memories.

“I hope this research inspires people to think of memory as something that is not static,” Harvey said. “Memories are active and integrally connected to the process of learning.”

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MIT Sloan Executive Education innovation@work Blog 08-26

If you think process improvement only works on the factory floor, think again

                                                  

If you’ve attempted to apply process improvement techniques in your workplace, only to see it fail, you’re not alone. Attempts to drive more order and productivity in the office often use process-focused improvement techniques such as Lean or the Toyota Production System that were originally developed to improve the physical, highly repetitive work found in factories. Unfortunately, such interventions are often resisted and rarely produce significant gains.

“When we work with doctors, lawyers, finance professionals, engineers, and designers, we often hear statements like, ‘my work is different from what happens in a factory, you can’t standardize it,’” says Don Kieffer, Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at MIT and Managing Partner of ShiftGear Work Design. “Intellectual work is different. But contrary to the argument that process improvement ‘only works in the factory,’ my experience is that, when properly applied, the concepts and principles underpinning Toyota and Lean methods produce more powerful results and far more quickly in the office.”

While engineering, finance, or IT can’t be standardized in the same way as a production operation, Kieffer believes it can be understood and dramatically improved through Dynamic Work Design. “ShiftGear’s approach is to understand the work using principles of work design, propose tools and methods that fit that work, and engage the people doing the work to quickly discover the next best way, not impose it upon them from a different kind of work or organization.”

In their MIT Sloan Executive Education program, Implementing Improvement Strategies: Dynamic Work Design, Kieffer and ShiftGear Partners Nelson Reppening (an MIT Sloan Professor) and Sheila Dodge present practical tools and methods for sustainable improvement efforts of any scale, in any industry, and in any function. Their method has proven to work in businesses as diverse as oil and gas, DNA sequencing, and engineering, at the scale of discrete problems or enterprise-wide strategic efforts.

The four principles of Dynamic Work Design

More than 20 years of research, consulting, and collaboration has led Keiffer and his colleagues to four principles that, in their view, “raise the game” on how to design and improve work, no matter what type of work it may be:

Reconcile activity and intent: Get crystal clear on the vision, mission, and targets, and then optimize the set of activities needed to accomplish those targets. Work should be designed so every activity is tied together to meet the targets.

Connect the human chain through triggers and checks: Without pre-specified rules, people usually wait too long to ask for help, and leaders don’t check in frequently enough. Good work design incorporates triggers and checks that signal teams and managers to meet to resolve ambiguity and fix problems, often in real time.

Structured problem-solving and creativity: Structured problem-solving methods mitigate our inherent desire to jump to solutions and encourage us to do a proper analysis using both data and investigation.

Optimal Challenge: Systems don’t work if they have too little or too much work in them. Putting the right amount of stress into the work system helps surface problems while allowing enough time to resolve them.

Whether you have 50, 500, or 5,000 employees, these principles can help you connect all of them to the flow of work that meets your organization’s targets.

Reproduced from MIT Management Executive Education

First draft of a genome-wide cancer ‘dependency map’ 08-22

Initial results reveal more than 760 genetic dependencies across multiple cancers

Graphic: The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard 

In one of the largest efforts to build a comprehensive catalog of genetic vulnerabilities in cancer, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified more than 760 genes upon which multiple types of cancer cells are strongly dependent for their growth and survival.

Many of these “dependencies,” the researchers report today in the journal Cell, are specific to certain cancer types. However, about 10 percent of them are common across multiple cancers, suggesting that a relatively small number of therapies targeting these core dependencies might each hold promise for combating several tumors.

To generate these findings, the research team conducted genome-wide RNA interference (RNAi) screens on 501 cell lines representing more than 20 types of cancer, silencing more than 17,000 genes individually in each line to identify genetic dependencies unique to cancerous cells.

Cancer cells can harbor a broad variety of genetic errors, from small mutations to wholesale swaps of DNA between chromosomes. If an error shuts down a critical gene, a cancerous cell will compensate by adjusting other genes’ activity, frequently developing a dependence on such adaptations in order to persist.

Identifying these dependencies provides opportunities for scientists to gain deeper insight into cancer biology and determine new therapeutic targets.

“Much of what has been and continues to be done to characterize cancer has been based on genetics and sequencing. That’s given us the parts list,” said study co-senior author William Hahn, an institute member in the Broad Cancer Program, chief of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Dana-Farber, and a leader in the Cancer Dependency Map initiative, a joint effort spanning the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber. “Mapping dependencies ascribes function to the parts and shows you how to reverse-engineer the processes that underlie cancer.”

RNAi silences genes using small pieces of RNA called small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). To run a genome-wide RNAi screen, researchers expose cells to pools of siRNAs and track the cells’ behavior.
“The simplest thing one can do with perturbed cells is allow them to keep growing over time and see which ones thrive,” explained study co-senior author David Root, an institute scientist and director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform at the Broad. “If cells with a certain gene silenced disappear, for example, it means that gene is essential for proliferation.”

The data revealed striking patterns in cancer cells’ dependencies. Many dependencies were cancer-specific, in that silencing each affected only a subset of the cell lines. However, more than 90 percent of the cell lines had a strong dependency on at least one of a set of 76 genes, suggesting that many cancers rely on a relatively few genes and pathways.

Using a set of molecular features (e.g., mutations, gene copy numbers, expression patterns) from each cell line, the team also generated biomarker-based models that helped explain the biology behind 426 of the 769 dependencies. Most of those biomarkers fell into four broad categories:

• Mutation(s) of a gene;
• Loss of a copy or reduced expression of a gene;
• Increased expression of a gene;
• Reliance on a gene functionally or structurally related to another, lost gene (a.k.a., a paralog dependence).

Surprisingly, more than 80 percent of the dependencies with biomarkers were associated with changes (up or down) in a gene’s expression. Mutations, often used as the grounds for pursuing a gene as a drug target, accounted for merely 16 percent of biomarker-associated dependencies.
Twenty percent of the dependencies the team discovered were associated with genes previously identified as potential drug targets.

“We can’t say we’ve found everything, but we can say that the genes we’re seeing fall into a relatively small number of bins, some of which are familiar, some less so,” Hahn said. “That initial taxonomy is a great starting point for building a full map.”

“Our results provide a starting point for therapeutic projects to decide where to focus their efforts,” said study co-first author Francisca Vazquez, a Cancer Dependency Map project leader. She added that while there was still much to do to validate the list, “It’s becoming increasingly easier to triangulate data and generate hypotheses as more genome-scale systematic data sets, like those from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, Genotype-Tissue Expression, and the Cancer Genome Atlas projects, become available.

“Bringing of all the data together will help us generate a truly comprehensive cancer dependency map.”

To eliminate false-positive results caused by seed effects — a phenomenon by which siRNAs inadvertently silence irrelevant genes — study co-first author Aviad Tsherniak led the development of a novel computational tool dubbed DEMETER.

“People sometimes take a dim view of RNAi because seed effects make the data so noisy,” said Tsherniak, leader of the Broad Cancer Program’s Data Science group. “DEMETER models gene knockdown and seed effects within the data, and computationally subtracts the seed effects. It cleans up the data and helps you find true dependencies.”

According to Hahn, the data argue that the time is ripe to pay more attention to the broader landscape of functional aspects of cancer, in addition to focusing on protein-coding gene mutations and variations.

“I think we’re close to the end of finding genes that are mutated or focally amplified in cancer,” he said. “To me, that’s a huge opportunity, because it means we have many heretofore untapped avenues for understanding cancer.”


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The Process vs. The Product 08-21

Shyam's take on The Process vs The Product...


The ultimate aim of any product or service should be to create that MOJO effect for the customer. Even a feeling that says, "Why didn't someone come out with this earlier". But you can't do this without a process, and I am not referring to the processes required to create a product.

The processes required to create a product are of course are an absolute inevitable. The confidence to create a MOJO effect stems from the quality of the product. However you need a process to create the MOJO effect, and there is no standard procedure about it.

Every time you need to create a standard process to create new standards in customer engagement. You need a promotional process that can create a benchmark in the minds of the customers about quality, utility, and the cost effectiveness of the product and also the one that elevates the customer esteem for the organization and its other products.

The process should make the product strong enough in customer perception, to enable other equally good but poorly promoted, products of the organization to piggy ride on the new esteem acquired through this product.

Now the article...

We work in an industry that glorifies the process of everything we build.

We are obsessed with roadmaps, methodologies, acronyms, and productivity tools. This shared language gives us a sense of belonging and makes us feel like we are in fact product people.
Process is important in life. And we should seek to build high quality products with focus and efficiency. I would never argue against that.

Product Managers and Product Designers glorify our process for building products on Twitter, podcasts, and at conferences — but we should remember something important.
Customers don’t actually care about how we build our products, or our process.
Customers do not care about our Slack debates, our Jira tickets, or the compromises we make to our roadmap along the way.

Customers only care about how our products feel in their hands, and nothing else.
That moment when customers first open our apps and escape their reality for a few minutes as they discover something new — that is the moment that matters if you build products.
We need to focus less on glorifying our process for everything we ‘product people’ do and focus more on what actually matters.

What matters is that we build products that make customers smile and realize something new about themselves.

What matters is that we build products that make life more fulfilling for billions of people by giving them access to education and new ideas.

What matters is that we build products which make customers say: I honestly can’t imagine my life before I downloaded that app.

We Product Managers spend our days writing specs, filing Jira tickets, and editing roadmaps. Process. Process. Process.

What else could we have created instead of that perfect Gantt chart?

Are there easy wins in our production apps that we could have discovered instead of seeking the perfect process?

Can we think less about our perfect Product Manager workflows and think more about simplifying our products?

Our job is to delight customers through the projects we build. Process is important, but do not forget that customers judge us on one thing. 

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Three Reasons to Ditch Technology in Your Flipped Classroom 08-21

What would happen if you were to arrive to your classroom, unplug the devices, turn off the
projector, and step away from the PowerPoint slides … just for the day?

What would you and your students do in class?

This was the challenge I presented to 100 faculty members who attended my session at the Teaching Professor Conference in St. Louis this past June. The title of the session was, “Using ‘Unplugged’ Flipped Learning Activities to Engage Students.” Our mission was to get “back to the basics” and share strategies to engage students without using technology.

Why Use “Unplugged” Strategies the Flipped Classroom?

Most of the conversations about the flipped classroom include discussions about technological tools. What video recording tool should I use? What tools are best for producing a podcast? What quizzing tool should I use to assess the pre-class work?  What types of clickers should I use in class to assess learning? With all of this focus on technology, why would we want to consider flipping a class without it? Here are three reasons:

1. To focus on the process. For many faculty, the “flip” means something more than how technology is used in and out of the classroom. In my work, for example, the FLIP is when you “Focus on your Learners by Involving them in the Process.” When you FLIP, you intentionally invert the design a learning environment so students engage in activities, apply concepts, and focus on higher level learning outcomes during class time.

This definition encourages us to think strategically about the learning experiences we are designing with our students so they can achieve the learning outcomes. The focus is not the technology. It’s the process. It’s the process of involving our students in applying and analyzing course content, making decisions, critiquing a topic, or evaluating a data set. It’s the process of creating something together to demonstrate understanding or to express ideas. Sometimes technology can help with this process, but sometimes it can become a distraction which could hinder the process.

2. To improve learning and retention. Scholars continue to analyze the pros and cons of technology in the classroom and its impact on student learning, retention, and engagement. For almost every study published on the advantages of technology, you can find another study on the disadvantages. Ultimately, the learning outcomes should inform how (or if) technology is used in the classroom.

It is interesting to consider how the findings of this recent study on taking notes by hand versus on a laptop has been shown to increase conceptual thinking (Mueller & Oppenheimer,2014). And, for those of us who use slides and videos in our flipped classrooms, it’s important to note the combination of images, text, videos, and our voice can be too overwhelming for some students, especially when they are introduced to new information. Using “unplugged” strategies in some of your lessons can reduce the cognitive load and help students remember what they’ve learned (Madda, 2015).

3. To enhance creativity and encourage real connections.

When I use unplugged strategies in my teaching, my students often say it’s “refreshing” to do something different. They often comment on how “tired” they are of slides and online discussion forums. When they disconnect from the devices, they tell me it helps them think of new ideas, and they appreciate the opportunity to connect with other students who are not distracted by a screen.
Likewise, when I use unplugged strategies in faculty development workshops, faculty often say that they appreciate the opportunity to put away their phones and laptops so they can make real connections with their colleagues (and get away from feeling obligated to answer emails!).

Flipping Faculty Development: Unplugged!

Speaking of faculty development, in my conference session, I wanted to engage faculty in the process of using “unplugged” tools in class to engage and involve students. To demonstrate how it can be done, and with the goal of “practicing what we preach” when it comes to faculty development, I flipped the session and placed faculty in the center of the learning experience.

The faculty participated in activities using five different “unplugged” tools: sticky notes, index cards, dice, a deck of cards, and poster paper. Each group was asked to analyze a case study using each of the tools and then brainstorm different ways these tech-free tools can be used in the classroom to increase student engagement and improve learning. I told workshop participants I would share their work in a Faculty Focus article and on my blog. As promised, here are some of their ideas:

Goal: To encourage students to ask more questions during class time.

Unplugged Tool: Dice

Strategy: Faculty member rolls the dice and the number rolled is the number of questions the students in the class must ask before class is dismissed.

Goal: To encourage students to analyze and prioritize information.

Unplugged Tool: Index cards

Strategy: Give students a case study. Ask them to individually decide which piece of information in the case is most important and write that information on an index card. Put students in groups and ask them to discuss and prioritize the cards from most to least important. Integrate their ideas into a class discussion.

Goal: To help students put information in an order.

Unplugged Tool: Sticky notes

Strategy: Give students a stack of index cards. Ask them to write each step of a procedure or process on the card and place the cards in the correct order from first step to last. Other groups can critique and change the order if needed. Use for class discussion.

For more unplugged teaching strategies created by the participants and to see the case studies, view my post on 25 Unplugged Strategies.

An important part of faculty development is to share ideas so we can all learn from each other. So, let’s keep the conversation going! What “unplugged” tools or strategies have you used in class to engage students and improve learning?


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Restoring pedagogical sanity ... and I would encourage others to keep it going.

Mark Zuckerberg's paternity leave plan 08-21

As he did after the birth of his first child in 2015, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking two months’ paternity leave from the company when his second daughter arrives. This time, Zuckerberg will break up the leave, spending one month at home with his children and wife Priscilla Chan right after the baby’s birth and taking the rest of the leave in December.

Zuckerberg is using only half of the four months of paid parental leave that Facebook allots male and female employees. It’s still far more time than the typical father takes off work for the birth of a child in the US, where only 15% of companies in a national survey last year offered paid paternity leave.
The lack of paid leave for men hurts parents who want to share the experience of caring for their babies, and contributes to the persistent lag in women’s wages and workforce participation. Fully paid paternity leave is key to breaking a vicious cycle in which employers pay women less and bypass them for promotions in anticipation that they’ll take time off to raise children, making the lower-earning female partner the natural choice to take unpaid or partially paid leave that’s ostensibly offered to both parents.

As Quartz’s Gwynn Guilford pointed out in a 2014 analysis of parental leave policies in Sweden and Japan, the more parental leave men take, the sooner women go back to work. A 2010 study in Sweden found that a woman’s future earnings rose 7% for every month her partner took under the country’s paid parental leave system, which incentivizes both parents to take time off. Sweden has one of the world’s highest rates of working women, and a nearly non-existent wage gap.

But it’s not enough for companies to offer paternity leave. Men have to actually take it, and this is where Zuckerberg’s decision to make his family plans public is significant. In a 2014 survey by the Working Mother Research Institute, men reported a significant gap between the availability of family-friendly, flexible working policies and the degree to which they were encouraged to take them. Those who did feel supported by their employers reported more satisfaction with the company, their careers, and their home lives.

“At Facebook, we offer four months of maternity and paternity leave because studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, it’s good for the entire family,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “And I’m pretty sure the office will still be standing when I get back.”
Meanwhile, there’s no better way to encourage employee behavior than to lead by example.


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Researchers Make Surprising Discovery About How Neurons Talk to Each Other 08-21

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have uncovered the mechanism by which neurons keep up with the demands of repeatedly sending signals to other neurons. The new findings, made in fruit flies and mice, challenge the existing dogma about how neurons that release the chemical signal dopamine communicate, and may have important implications for many dopamine-related diseases, including schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and addiction.

The research conducted at Pitt and Columbia University was published online today in the journal Neuron.

Neurons communicate with one another by releasing chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and glutamate, into the small space between two neurons that is known as a synapse. Inside neurons, neurotransmitters awaiting release are housed in small sacs called synaptic vesicles.

“Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that neurons can change how much dopamine they release as a function of their overall activity. When this mechanism doesn’t work properly, it could lead to profound effects on health,” explained the study’s senior author Zachary Freyberg, M.D., Ph.D., who recently joined Pitt as an assistant professor of psychiatry and cell biology. Freyberg initiated the research while at Columbia University.

When the researchers triggered the dopamine neurons to fire, the neurons’ vesicles began to release dopamine as expected. But then the team noticed something surprising: additional content was loaded into the vesicles before they had the opportunity to empty. Subsequent experiments showed that this activity-induced vesicle loading was due to an increase in acidity levels inside the vesicles.

“Our findings were completely unexpected,” said Freyberg. “They contradict the existing dogma that a finite amount of chemical signal is loaded into a vesicle at any given time, and that vesicle acidity is fixed.”

The team then demonstrated that the increase in acidity was driven by a transport channel in the cell’s surface, which allowed an influx of negatively charged glutamate ions to enter the neuron, thus increasing its acidity. Genetically removing the transporter in fruit flies and mice made the animals less responsive to amphetamine, a drug that exerts its effect by stimulating dopamine release from neurons.

“In this case, glutamate is not acting as a neurotransmitter. Instead it is functioning primarily as a source of negative charge, which is being used by these vesicles in a really clever way to manipulate vesicle acidity and therefore change their dopamine content,” Freyberg said. “This calls into question the whole textbook model of vesicles as having fixed amounts of single neurotransmitters. It appears that these vesicles contain both dopamine and glutamate, and dynamically modify their content to match the conditions of the cell as needed.”

In the future, the team plans to look more closely at how increases in vesicle acidification affect health. A number of brain diseases are characterized by abnormal dopamine neuron signaling and altered levels of the neurotransmitter.

“Since we have demonstrated that the balance between glutamate and dopamine is important for controlling the amount of dopamine that a neuron releases, it stands to reason that an imbalance between the two neurotransmitters could be contributing to symptoms in these diseases,” said Freyberg.

This article has been republished from materials provided by UPMC. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

 

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जनाब गूगल (Google) ने किया दोहे का आलू पोहा ... 08-20

ये दोहा मन को भाया, बस चुरा लिया, आशा हैं, आप को भी पसंद आएगा।


तन से भारी साँस हैं,
इसे समझलो खूब। 
मुर्दा जल में तैरता,
जिन्दा जाता डूब। 

कवी नीरज जी ने लिखा हैं इसे। 


अब इसका अनुवाद जनाब गूगल (Google) अंग्रेजी में कर रहे। 

अगर इसे आप समझ सके, तो, कृपया हमें भी समझाएगा।

There are heavy breaths from the tan,
Understand it a lot
Floating in dead water,
Surviving gets sinking.

Now the above text is translated back to Hindi again by Google.

तन से भारी श्वास है,
इसे बहुत कुछ समझें
मृत पानी में फ़्लोटिंग,
जीवित हो जाता है 

Try to connect this with the original Doha and its meaning.

Please don't tear your hair, if you can't

Just an experiment, hope you enjoyed it.

The Diversity of Play, does it improve cognitive development in children ???

How does play affect the cognitive development of children around the world? Doctoral candidate Lynneth Solis is looking to find out.

Play is an integral part of a child’s development according to traditional research mostly conducted in Western societies, but what role does play serve and what does it look like for children in indigenous communities? Ed.D. candidate Lynneth Solis, Ed.M.’10, is determined to better answer that question. 

Solis’ research focuses on children’s cognitive development, specifically how young children play with each other and with objects to understand and build theories about the world around them, and how this is shaped by their cultural context.

After completing her master's in the Mind, Brain, and Education Program in 2010, Solis spent the following year as a research assistant with Project Zero working alongside Principal Research Scientist in Education Tina Grotzer, looking at children’s understanding of complex causal patterns in science. It was through her work at PZ that Solis expanded her own research into children’s cognitive development and how they use objects to understand complex scientific phenomena such as friction, balance, and other physical concepts. This in turn led her to include looking at play in crosscultural settings.

In 2015, Solis — the recipient of a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship through the Committee on General Scholarships at Harvard — spent a year working with and observing children in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. (The Kogi settlement in which she worked is pictured below.) What she found, contrary to prior research, was that indigenous children were engaged in complex forms of play that hadn’t been documented before.

“In the past, researchers reported that indigenous children didn’t play in complex ways, but I found them pretending and involved in object play and construction similar to the way children in the West play,” Solis says. “But I also found ways children in these communities would spend time together socializing, enjoying each other’s company without outwardly appearing very playful at first glance, but involved in unstructured and positive experiences that we could call play.”

After interviewing parents, Solis discovered even more variation from the narrative older research told. While some parents felt play was not part of their culture, others believed play helped prepare children for the future inside and outside their community.

“They saw play as a way for children to feel more confident speaking, expressing themselves, and interacting with adults and other children within and outside their culture,” says Solis “They also expressed that they believed play could help their children to explore their environment, learn, and develop creativity.”

Grotzer says that Solis’ important ethnographic work is helping the field of children’s cognitive development better understand the diversity of play and its role in cultures outside the West, and understanding what parents and community members believe about play is crucial for designing educational interventions.

“Lynneth is able to set aside her own cultural assumptions to really ‘see’ what is going on and to interpret it through the eyes of the cultures that she is studying,” Grotzer says. “The stories of her work convey the extraordinary ability that Lynneth has to ‘become one’ with the children such that they have included her in their hidden worlds and have given us a rare window into their childhoods.”

It was critical to her research in Colombia, Solis says, to be trusted by children so that they would invite her into their play spaces. “When they said let's go to the river to swim, I went to the river, and when they went on crab hunts at the beach at night, I ran along the ocean with them,” she says. “This meant refraining from acting like an authority figure, so I became a curious companion who happened to always be writing notes and documenting their activities.”

Solis has also been working closely with the Lego Foundation, in partnership with the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, to better understand the science of play to support learning, which she says is an important next step for the field.

“There’s a call for systematic research on play,” Solis says. “Up to this point there’s been a lot of correlational research, but now methodological advances get us closer to understanding the developmental mechanisms involved in play from a biological and neurological perspective. I feel like I’m on the beginning journey of that and it feels exciting.”

Solis’ work has not gone unrecognized. During her time at HGSE as a master's candidate she was named an Intellectual Contribution Award winner, and last year she was a Julius B. Richmond fellow at the Center on the Developing Child and AERA Minority Dissertation Fellow. While she is set to graduate next year, Solis plans on continuing her research to expand understanding of child development.

“I’m very interested in indigenous communities here in the States and abroad and expanding the stories we tell in child development,” Solis says. “It’s important to tell stories of diverse populations to really understand child development, and the more varied stories we tell, the more we understand.”

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Desktop Alert Named Best Mass Notification System by GSN 2017 Airport, Seaport, Border Security Awards 08-16

Desktop Alert, Inc., the patented system owner of less than one minute network-centric emergency mass notification systems (EMNS) to military, government, healthcare, higher education and industrial organizations, today announced that its industry leading mass notification communication platform, Desktop Alert 5.x has garnered three 1st place awards from Government Security News’ (GSN) 2017 Airport, Seaport, Border Security Awards.

Panel 2 of the Summit was moderated by Chuck Brooks, President for Government Relations and Marketing at Sutherland Global Services, who ran the most interactive panel of the day. With all guests being members of DC’s IT Tech elite and the subject of the panel being future threats and new defense technologies, the ballroom was buzzing with questions and discourse. It’s safe to say that this panel ran much like a think-tank, comprised of DC’s greatest tech minds and fueled by the spirit of collaborative learning.

Mr. Brooks has also been cited by Linkedin as one of the top 5 out of 500 million members to follow for emerging technology issues. Linkedin will also be featuring Chuck in their upcoming blogs as a cyber security SME and advisor.

Desktop Alert was named Best Mass Notification System and also a co-winner for Most Notable Implementation of new Technology – Solano Country Implementation of Desktop Alert and Safekey. Desktop Alert subsidiary Metis Secure Solutions also won for Best Alert Beacon System.

"We are honored to have been chosen as a multiple category winner. Our companies numerous years of products and services to the U.S. Army National Guard, U.S. Air National Guard and Northern Command proved pivotal in the award selection process," said Howard Ryan, Founder Desktop Alert Inc.

About Desktop Alert: http://www.desktopalert.net   

Worldwide U.S. Military organizations such as U.S. Northern Command, The United States National Guard, The United States Air Force Academy, The United States Military Academy at West Point, Multi-National Forces in IRAQ and Afghanistan, The U.S. Air Force, The U.S. Army now utilize the Desktop Alert mass notification platform daily for their organizations emergency communication requirements. Desktop Alert can contact thousands of users with desktop alerts and require receipt confirmation of the message. Those not verified can then be listed on a report and/or sent as a "Target Package" to be automatically contacted by other means such as email, SMS, phone calls and other devices.  

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Man orders 50-inch TV on Amazon, gets 13-inch monitor 08-13

A resident of Mumbra, a town on Mumbai outskirts, is fighting for a refund from Amazon since past two months but to no avail.

Mumbra resident Mohammad Sarwar had ordered a 50-inch television set on Amazon's website in May and paid Rs 33,000 via credit card.

Sarwar received the package on time but was advised not to open it until a technician comes to install it.

"They said I may inadvertently damage the TV while opening the box. I left the box intact, which I now realise was a big mistake," he told Mirror.

When the technician arrived a day later, there was no TV inside the box but a 13-inch Acer monitor, which appeared to have been used before.

Sarwar has been fighting for a refund since then.

"I made several calls before a customer service agent said the refund would be issued only after I sent the package back. I was told I would have to bear the courier service charges. The suggestion left me furious, but I wanted my money back so I agreed," he said.

The story does not end here. A courier company refused to send the monitor as it didn't have an office near his house.

Meanwhile, Sarwar claims Amazon did not pay heed to his calls.

"The e-tailer's customer support took its own sweet time every time I called. It kept transferring my calls from one agent to another. I even sent emails and shared my grievance on social media. Nothing happened," he said.

An Amazon spokesperson told Mirror it was trying to resolve Sarwar's complaint. "We are in touch with the customer and are committed to resolving this at the earliest," the official said.

"I understand as an e-commerce site, they (Amazon) have their limits, but they can't keep me hanging after delivering a wrong product. I will take the matter to a court, if that's what will make them take customers seriously," said Sarwar.  


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RBI's dividend to govt halves to Rs 30,659 crore 08-11

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will transfer Rs 30,659 crore of its surplus to the government for the financial year 2016-17, less than half of the Rs 65,876 crore it transferred a year earlier.

The RBI did not provide any reason for the decline in dividend but economists said this indicated the cost incurred by the central bank in printing new notes as well as in sterilising liquidity after old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes were scrapped in November and subsequently returned to the banking system.

The dividend paid is the lowest since 2011-12, when the RBI had transferred Rs 16,010 crore of its surplus to the government. In 2012-13, the central bank paid Rs 33,010 crore. The RBI’s financial year runs from July to June. The central bank is expected to publish its annual reports next week after its board met on Thursday to clear the accounts. 

In 2012-13, the YH Malegam Committee recommended the central bank transfer its entire surplus to the government. The RBI has been transferring its entire surplus to the government since then. It paid Rs 52,679 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 65,896 crore in 2014-15.

In the Union Budget for 2017-18, the government had accounted for a dividend of Rs 74,901 crore from the RBI and other nationalised banks. An official later said the RBI’s share would be Rs 58,000 crore. 

RBI Governor Urjit Patel told a parliamentary panel in July that the central bank had not finished counting the old returned notes. 

He has also said notes not returned remain the RBI’s liability and cannot be passed on to the government as dividend. 

The Union Budget had not accounted for any special dividend from the RBI against demonetisation, which some economists had estimated would be in the lakhs of crores of rupees.

The low actual dividends, meanwhile, will exert pressure on the government to meet its fiscal deficit. Care Ratings Chief Economist Madan Sabnavis said the fiscal deficit could increase from 3.2 per cent of the GDP to 3.4 per cent this year. At its peak, the excess liquidity parked by banks neared Rs 5 lakh crore, on which the central bank had to pay them 6 per cent interest. The average daily liquidity absorption continued to remain above Rs 2 lakh crore after demonetisation was announced.

According to Devendra Pant, chief economist of India Ratings & Research, the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar depressed returns, in rupee terms, on the RBI’s foreign holdings. The rupee has appreciated by more than 6 per cent against the dollar since January.

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Cybersecurity and cybersecurity professionals 08-10

From Bitcoin and Blockchain to hacks and ransomware, security is a hot topic in tech. According to a recent Cybersecurity Ventures Report, the cost of cybercrime damage is predicted to reach $6 trillion by 2021, and global spending on cybersecurity products and services for defending against cyber crime is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2021. With that much at stake, the business world certainly has security on their minds.

It’s critical for technology marketers to stay on the pulse of today’s trends – and what better way to do so than by following influential peers on LinkedIn? To learn from today’s best writers, content curators, and opinion leaders on all things security, look no further.

Below, we’re showcasing five professionals providing a helpful portal into the world of security – those that can keep you — and your organization — in the know!

Bill Brenner, Infosec Scribe at Sophos

Bill has been on a number of “top tech” lists, and for good reason. He is active in the LinkedIn security community and focused on sharing real-time info about the current state of the industry. Following him ensures that you’ll be alerted about recent ransomware attacks – and fed great articles on how to combat it.

One of Bill’s recent posts shared an angle not often seen, talking about his own “Rockstar” status in the security world and how it caused his content and point of view to become stale. When an influencer takes time to step back and assess his or her influence and POV, it’s anything but stale; Bill is a breath of fresh air in an oftentimes cluttered conversation.

Tech marketer takeaway: If you think you’ve learned everything about a particular topic or industry, you’re probably wrong. As Bill put it, “Never stop seeking truth.” Your customers and prospects will thank you for this – it’s never fun talking to a person or company who thinks they have all the answers. Keep an open mind when it comes to new content, ideas and perspectives, and you’ll be a much better marketer for it!

Maya Schirmann, CMO at Deep Instinct

Maya is a great go-to connection when it comes to security marketing. Her company, Deep Instinct, is “the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity” and she also takes a “deep learning” approach to her own content. Tech marketers can benefit from her great approach to discussing security. As data breaches and hacks are in the headlines more often than not these days, Maya shares frequent helpful updates, podcasts and go-to lists on the all of the latest cybersecurity news. She also covers a number of insightful topics  in her published posts such as weak password management, “hacking highlights” and an Oscar-themed awards post containing actionable security advice for organizations both large and small.

Tech marketer takeaway: Creatively tying your topic of choice to current events and impactful discussions is a great way to get noticed – and it’ll pique the interest of potential customers. Tying content into interesting trends and current events is an effective way to set your content apart.

Steve Morgan, Founder & Editor-In-Chief, Cybersecurity Ventures

Steve is a veritable fountain of security info – he’s written dozens of reports on cybercrime, cybersecurity products and services, and launched the “Cybersecurity 500” list of the hottest cybersecurity companies to watch each year. He shares updates on cybersecurity employment, defense firms, hacks and data breaches – and how companies can be proactively preparing for their IT security futures. Many of his shared posts are helpful because they are so proactive – they often include step-by-step instructions for companies looking to boost their cybersecurity efforts, where to best spend their security budgets and what risks they should be most aware of and on the lookout for. Steve doesn’t just want companies to be in the know – he wants them to do something about it!

Tech marketer takeaway: Simply knowing about the current trends and buzzwords in an industry isn’t enough. To be truly effective as a security marketer, you must provide actionable insights to your customers and prospects. Everyone knows that cyberattacks can and will hit: but are you contributing to the conversation and equipping people who are preparing for the worst?

Yotam Gutman, VP Marketing at CyberDB

Yotam not only frequently posts interesting cybersecurity trends, he actively wants to engage and have meaningful discussions with his LinkedIn audience of almost 15,000 followers. He takes cybersecurity incredibly seriously and shares intricate, detailed data – but he also doesn’t shy away from sharing a fun story or video with his followers now and then. Yotam often attends IT security events around the world and takes the time to share what he’s learned –  reminding his followers and their companies that amongst the hustle and hype around cybersecurity, it’s important to define who you are and have a definitive brand for your organization.

Tech marketer takeaway: You don’t have to be a technical expert in all things security to come at this topic from a new angle and appeal to your tech buyers with your insights. Tech professionals want to be part of an active community that both gives out relevant info and engages in a more meaningful way (and events are a great way to do this). It’s all about the conversation!

Bob Carver, Manager of Network Security, Verizon

Bob knows his stuff when it comes to risk management, cyber resiliency and strategy, incident management and threat intelligence – he’s monitored tens of thousands of infected endpoints at Verizon, at one point overseeing the company’s Security Incident Response team. Follow Bob for a more in-depth take on many IT security conversations, from Botnet monitoring and cryptocurrency to the NSA. Bob’s content comes from the fact that he’s most likely “seen it all” throughout his career – and he wants to put that in-depth knowledge to good use for companies around the globe looking to proactively fight cyberattacks.

Tech marketer takeaway: A little technical in-depth info goes a long way. It might take some serious time and a lot of research to truly understand complex security topics that your customers care about – but it’s worth the hassle in the end.

As security is becoming more and more of a priority for many in the tech industry, it’s important to stay abreast of the latest security trends and innovations. These security leaders are invaluable within the LinkedIn technology community, and each showcases the true power of the LinkedIn network: that anyone can both access and participate in greater industry discussions across the globe. It’s time to take what we learn from them and put it into action!