International Centers Of Excellence Research Articles

Analysis of Head of Departments Leadership Styles: Implication for Improving Research University Management Practices

Being an international center of excellence in higher education is considered as a comprehensive goal of the Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia. In satisfying this goal, Malaysian higher education institutions and specifically Research Universities (RUs) are in center of attention, as they play a crucial role in developing the community. Administrators’ leadership styles has influenced on lecturers’ job satisfaction and play essential role in materialization of research university's goals and vision. Utilizing a descriptive correlational design, this study aimed to determine head of departments’ leadership style and its correlation with lecturers’ job satisfaction. The target populations were the lecturers of three Malaysian RUs. The MLQ 5x and WFJSDS were used as the instruments of the study.Based on lecturers’ perception, the head of departments applied a combination of three distinct leadership styles in terms of transformational leadership (fairly often), transactional leadership (sometimes), and laissez-faire (once in a while). Among three discernable leadership styles, the transformational and the transactional leadership styles were positively and laissez-faire were negatively correlated with the lecturers’ job satisfaction. In terms of job satisfaction RUs’ lecturers were moderately satisfied. The study concludes that head of departments in RUs are encouraged to practice transformational leadership since multiple regression analysis revealed that it is a significant predictor of lecturer's job satisfaction.

Cardiothoracic research "A true calling"

What makes the uniqueness of scientific achievements and what are the premises of an outstanding career? We used the bibliography and the citation analysis of the chief of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery of the Medical University of Vienna over a period of thirty years and matched them with potential influencing parameters including the research environment and analyzed them with significant qualities proposed by Toledo Pereira as CDFI (commitment, determination, focus and innovation). 698 items were found in a scientific citation index expanded search over this period. The number of citations above 50 was matched with the career of the first authors and related to the scientific environment of the individuals. Compared to other areas of scientific achievements cardiosurgical research of our department seems to be highly influential in certain areas especially in the analysis of surgical and pathophysiologic problems the application of innovative procedures setting standards in many important areas in cardiovascular disciplines. It can be speculated that cardiosurgical as well as translational research can be developed from a niche player into a successful international center of excellence during the era of one single leader.

Reconciliation Between China and Japan: The Key Link to Security Cooperation in East Asia

The emerging power of China-be it or threat-has been analyzed repeatedly by experts. But to date little has been concluded about America's precipitous relative decline, both in its hard and so-called soft power. The policy failures and disastrous initiatives of the George W. Bush administration have yet to be tallied up strategically. More important for Asia is the need to investigate the critically significant juncture between the two patterns: China's rise and the U.S. decline. That relationship, no matter how difficult it is to measure in material terms, has begun to reshape strategic relations around the world, and especially in East Asia. It is the major strategic transformative event of 2007, the Year of the Pig. The crux of that structural shift in global power in East Asia has emerged in China's relations with Japan, America's most important Asian ally. It is there that the future of the region will very likely be decided. Will it be cooperation or confrontation? The stakes are high. Leaders in Beijing and Tokyo, responding to the changing strategic environment, will decide whether to make a future together as the key major powers in an East Asian Community or else to take sides in a renewed war between the United States and China. Crises over North Korea as a nuclearweapons power, Taiwan, territorial disputes in the East China Sea, or a possible Japanese decision to go will test their willingness to work together for the future of a peaceful and increasingly prosperous East Asia. In August 2006 at the Australian National University, we convened an international workshop on Reconciliation between China and Japan: A Search for Solutions, funded by the Department of International Relations in the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies and the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies.1 Twenty-one scholars from Australia, Japan, China, the United States, and several other countries participated. The ANU workshop was the first part of a continuing, collaborative project on historical reconciliation and cooperative security in East Asia. A second workshop, to be hosted by Amitav Acharya at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, will be convened later this year.2 The purpose of the ANU workshop was to prompt discussion and debate about the best ways to encourage reconciliation between Japan and China. Our objective was to produce concrete and realistic policy proposals for enhancing security cooperation between the two Asian powers, especially with respect to their participation in the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue and in the potential East Asian Community. Among sovereign states, it is always easier for governments to lapse into confrontation or even conflict than to work together to achieve mutual benefit. To cooperate requires conscientious design, constant attention, and committed care by all parties. In the proposed design for an East Asian Community, for example, none of the countries in the region, including Australia, wants to have to choose between China and Japan. They want to build viable security institutions that include both Asian powers. The analogy often mentioned is that, just as a security community in Europe required cooperation between Germany and France, so the East Asian Community will need to be built on security cooperation between China and Japan. When Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro was in office, Japanese-Chinese economic relations continued to improve while their political-strategic relations grew worse-what has often been called cold politics and hot economics. Analysts of the contemporary Sino-Japanese relationship have discussed with insight the nature of the bilateral problems (e.g., disputes about history and territory; geopolitical rivalry; Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine; competition for scarce energy resources; anti- Japanese demonstrations in China; and China's opposition to Japan's hopes for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council), but there has been little in the literature so far about how these conflicts might be resolved or at least ameliorated. …

Are Nomograms Better Than Currently Available Stage Groupings for Bladder Cancer?

Are Nomograms Better Than Currently Available Stage Groupings for Bladder Cancer?

Fresh and Salt: Introduction

Fresh and Salt was a Trans/forming Cultures workshop on water, an issue of urgent interest in Australia and the region. It focused on the relationships between people and water, with particular attention to the interests of Indigenous peoples and was organised around four themes: freshwater rivers, oceans, borders and commons. Participants at the symposium included activists and academic researchers who brought with them an extraordinarily broad disciplinary background. They ranged from cultural analysts to freshwater biologists, from historians and anthropologists to lawyers, political scientists and geographers. This generated vigorous and wide-ranging discussions, opening up unfamiliar comparisons between conditions on inland freshwater rivers and those of ocean island societies, or between the politics of modernising technologies on vast tropical rivers like the Mekong with those of arid zone rivers like those in inland China and Australia. In doing so, these discussions probed the ways in which the tools of social and cultural analysis can be usefully engaged with those of policy, biology and economics. This introductory essay argues that the papers refined and presented here reflect the qualities of the symposium discussions. They illuminate the ways in which people generate meanings for water, the ways the political battles over water are fought out and the ways in which water as rivers or oceans has formed fruitful but contested border zones across the region. 
 
 This symposium was convened by Trans/forming Cultures, the UTS Centre for Culture and Communications in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science. It was generously supported by the Asia Pacific Futures Network and by the International Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific Studies. The workshop was initiated and conducted by researchers from the centre, including Stephanie Donald [then TfC Director], Heather Goodall, Kate Barclay, James Goodman, Stephen Muecke and Devleena Ghosh [current TfC Director]. Participants were drawn from a number of active research networks associated with TfC, including the China Node of the APFN, the South Asia Network and the Research Initiative on International Activism.

Peripheral Nerve Surgery

Peripheral nerve surgery encompasses acute nerve injuries, entrapment neuropathies and nerve sheath tumours. It is practiced by surgeons of varying backgrounds with expertise in orthopaedic, neurological, plastic and reconstructive surgery. Increasingly, several international centres of excellence have emerged whose surgeons are experts in the field and which offer the multidisciplinary care that patients with peripheral nerve disorders require. Most of these centres have websites outlining the services they offer but very few go into the level of detail which would clarify the concerns and queries that this group of patients commonly have.

Sir John Vivian Dacie. 20 July 1912 — 12 February 2005

John Dacie was the leading figure in haematology in this country during its period of major expansion after World War II. By his meticulous approach to the study of patients in haematological disorders in the laboratory he was able accurately to define many new diseases, particularly haemolytic anaemias, so laying a firm foundation for their further definition by the tools of the protein chemistry and molecular biology eras. And by establishing the haematology laboratory at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School as an international centre of excellence, where many future leaders of the field were trained, he had a critical role in the development of the clinical and laboratory aspects of haematology, both in the UK and internationally.

The Defence Medical Library Service and Military Medicine

The Defence Medical Library Service (DMLS) supports the clinical practice and career development of military health professionals across the world. Clinical governance and the need for medical knowledge to be evidence-based means the DMLS has a central role to play in support of defence medicine. The DMLS is important for enabling health professionals to make sense of the evidence-based pyramid and the hierarchy of medical knowledge. The Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) in Birmingham is recognised as an international centre of excellence. The information, knowledge and research requirements of the RCDM will provide opportunities for the DMLS to support and engage with the academic community.

Arthur Thomas Paterson: the life and times of a New Zealand ophthalmologist.

Arthur Thomas Paterson was a pre-eminent New Zealand ophthalmologist who settled in the United Kingdom after the First World War and became a leading figure in the development of ophthalmic services in the north-east of England. This vignette explores his contributions to clinical education and the establishment of comprehensive ophthalmic services in Newcastle upon Tyne. It also highlights the Arthur Thomas Paterson scholarship bequest to enable New Zealand ophthalmologists to acquire additional specialist training in inter-national centres of excellence.

E.N. Economou's contribution to the establishment and development of the University of Crete and the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas

This paper offers a sketch of E.N. Economou's career in the context of historical and political developments in Greece during the past 40 years, and attempts to evaluate his multifaceted contribution to the University of Crete and the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas as a teacher and administrator. He was one of the first senior faculty members of UC, and played a vital role, not only in the creation of a first rate department of physics, but in the development of the University as a whole, in a critical period for Greek higher education. FORTH was his brain child and, under his leadership, has become – and been recognized – as an international center of excellence.

Emergency control of transboundary diseases of livestock in Southern and Eastern Europe

“Emergency Control of Transboundary Diseases of Livestock in Southern and Eastern Europe”, approved in the year 2000 and implemented from September 2001 the CENTAUR is expected to expand significantly. The major objective of this training Regional Project will be to strengthen the national and regional capacities to respond to transboundary animal disease emergencies through technology transfer in the fields of diagnostics, epidemiology and emergency preparedness. The following countries are included in the Project: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Federation and the Serbian Republic), Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey. Southern and Eastern Europe are the strategically important areas especially exposed to Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs). The CENTAUR’s main task is to facilitate contacts with international centers of excellence and international organizations in order to achieve full compatibility with OIE and EU standards regarding disease control methods. The first CENTAUR Countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have been CENTAUR members since 1997 following the implementation of the previous FAO TCP Project. From the Baltic countries: Lithuania has recently joined the network and Latvia and Estonia have been encouraged to do so. Also the CENTAUR was joined by the Member: Sankt Petersburg Academy of Veterinary Medicine, Russian Federation (2001). It is expected that the Countries and subscribers of the CENTAUR NEWS FLASH INFO published by the Veterinary Research Institute, Brno will play an active role regarding the dissemination of scientific/professional information, regional cooperation and training. Four workshops to be held and other activities proposed in the project are described. Emergency control of transboundary diseases of livestock in Southern and Eastern Europe

The Quality of Surgical Care Project: benchmark standards of open resection for abdominal aortic aneurysm in Western Australia.

The Quality of Surgical Care Project (QSCP) was established in May 1996, to evaluate surgical outcomes and where indicated, recommend changes to improve the quality of surgical care in Western Australia (WA). The purpose of this study is to establish benchmark standards in WA for operative mortality, 5-year survival and length of stay in all patients who were surgically treated for aneurysm of the abdominal aorta (AAA) in WA. The WA Linked Database was used to link the morbidity and mortality records of all patients admitted and surgically treated for AAA in WA from 1985 to 1994. The linked chains of de-identified hospital morbidity and death records were selected using diagnostic and procedure codes pertaining to AAA. Three groups were separated for analysis: those admitted for rupture, those admitted for elective repair, and those who were admitted to hospital as an emergency without mention of rupture but who underwent repair for AAA. Independent analysis for gender and patients 80 years or more were included in the study. Patients were excluded from the study if they were less than 55 years of age. A total of 1475 cases (1257 males, 218 females) were identified. The mean age in elective cases was 70.4 years in males and 72.4 years in females, and for rupture the mean ages were 71.9 and 74.8 years, respectively. Median length of stay for males was 12 days for elective cases. Admission type or age did not significantly influence length of stay. Thirty-day mortality in males was 4.4% for elective repair and 36.7% for ruptured AAA and 5-year survival was 71.7 and 47.7%, respectively. The overall case fatality rate for ruptured AAA was 79.3% which included those cases who died from rupture without being admitted to hospital. These community-wide data provide a realistic measure of surgical performance for open repair of AAA. The outcomes for elective and rupture repair for AAA compare favourably with standards reported by international centres of excellence. They also support the use of this procedure in patients over 80 years of age with rupture. This information can be used for ongoing audit purposes and as a benchmark for the introduction of new treatment modalities.

Telemedicine and the New Children's Hospital (Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children).

Telemedicine is an important factor in the future strategy of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children. As a state, national and international centre of excellence, it is the hospital's role to assist in the development of the best child health services. An important aim is to provide easy access to a full range of paediatric services through the provision of a comprehensive telemedicine service, which encompasses videoconferencing and tele-imaging, and positions the child as the centre of service provision. Experience so far suggests that in Australia, as in other countries, the adoption of telemedicine may outstrip the ability of the legislative and administrative frameworks to keep pace. Thus, the enablers appear to be cultural and technological while the obstacles are rooted in the way in which health systems are financed and administered.

Dilemmes dans les stratégies d'aide

Dilemmas in Aid Strategies The debate over aid to poor countries has shifted from questions of substance (what strategies and policies are right for development) to questions of process (how to deliver aid more effectively). This paper argues that in heavily-assisted countries (where official development assistance is more than 5 % of GDP), local institutional capacities are undermined, incentives for responsible decision-making are distorted, and dependency deepens. Donors have long been aware of these problems. But they have been unable to make the changes needed to avoid them because donor methods and conflicting objectives create basic contradictions. The way out of these dilemmas is for donors and aided countries to negotiate a target date for ending «traditional » aid, say ten years. In the transition, the nature of a transformed aid relationship would be worked out. During the transition, capacity-building and preparation for self-reliance should be the number one priority ; and the least intrusive aid instruments should be emphasized -for example, debt relief, project aid and reliance on regional and international centers of excellence in education, training and research. Policy lending and its associated conditionalities should be quickly phased out.

Response to Eric Single

It is a real pleasure to attend this meeting for three reasons. Firstly, Dr Dorothy Black, in whose honour these events are held, has made an enormous contribution to our national responses to drugs and to HIV. It is good that these lectures serve as a tribute to her work, and as one that she herself is able to attend and enjoy. Secondly, the Research Centre on Drugs and Health Behaviour has established itself as a major international centre of excellence and innovation, even though research into alcohol and drug issues in the UK is in a precarious state. Thirdly, it is a real delight to be able to respond to an address by Professor Eric Single. Eric is both a highly respected colleague and a friend. It is not an exaggeration to acknowledge the contribution that Eric has made and continues to make in combining the highest level of scientific competence and integrity with the wish to foster a humane and decent response to problems associated with alcohol and other psychoactive substances. Alcohol is humanity’s favourite mind-altering drug. Those of us who consume it generally do so with enjoyment and without harm. Sadly, some people drink heavily or inappropriately, and such risky use is associated with a huge toll of adverse consequences. It is clear that the extent of such alcohol-related harm is a reflection of the more general use of alcohol in society. Alcohol problems are associated with the ways in which alcohol is consumed and in particular, with the pattern of risky drinking. As Eric Single has outlined (Single, 1996), the formulation of alcohol control policies has generally been vague, and with little sense of direction or of which methods might produce tangible results. Moreover, the constructive discussion of alcohol policy issues has frequently been blighted by the fact that these are highly politicized. Researchers in this particular arena often feel that they are under fire from all directions, and that both hard evidence and rationality are the first casualties of such skirmishes (Plant et al., 1996). In this situation a cogent and balanced presentation such as that delivered here this evening is to be greatly valued. I believe that in any society in which alcohol is widely used, legal, and an important feature of leisure time, harm reduction or harm minimization offers a realistic formula which may achieve two paramount objectives. The first of these is to reduce levels of alcohol-related problems such as accidents, injuries, premature deaths, illnesses, public disorder and a host of family, social, economic and other consequences. Secondly, harm reduction offers a way forward that is not unduly oppressive and which is not a threat to basic human rights. It is sometimes suggested that ‘researchers should not take sides’. In relation to issues such as the reduction of the harm associated with risky drinking, it would, I believe, be a poor researcher who did not consider three key issues.

The International Society of Emergency Medical Services (ISEMS)

In September 1980 at the International Aeromedical Evacuation Congress held in Munich, West Germany, the International Society of Emergency Medical Services (ISEMS) was formed. The purpose of this new society is to develop, promote, and improve EMS throughout the world. The founding members came from sixteen nations and represented such regions as Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.This new organization, ISEMS, provides a permanent, ongoing focal point for studies and serves as a global clearinghouse for EMS technical assistance, training, management, and evaluation. The Society remains on an international level, and its eligible membership consists of all persons who participate in EMS throughout the world. The publication of a scientific journal for all EMS personnel is planned. Through ISEMS, International Centers of Excellence will be established to provide technical assistance to countries for improvement of their EMS programs; training seminars and educational programs will also be sponsored. In addition, annually sponsored meetings in key cities in various countries of the world are planned.