Unifying Principle Research Articles

Leadership canvas: towards a leadership meta-theory

Purpose The voluminous research on leadership, along with multiple theories, makes it challenging for organizational leaders, managers, and trainers to keep track of and reconcile the different theories of leadership to derive benefits from them. We propose a leadership canvas as a meta-theory of leadership theories, integrating the major existing theories by highlighting the unifying principles that underpin these theories. Design/methodology/approach This paper has been triggered by students’ and executives’ questions regarding leadership theories and how they choose one over the other. In this paper, we have coded the leadership theories and plotted them on the two-dimensional framework using two dimensions: (1) the collaboration between leader and followers engrained in the theories, and (2) the leader focus, as implied by the different theorists. Findings Our proposed two-dimensional leadership canvas reveals that concepts in theories lower on the canvas are necessary conditions for theories higher on the leadership canvas. Thus, our framework illustrates how different leadership theories are part of a continuum rather than distinct from each other. Originality/value The proposed framework ensures a bird’s eye view of the theories, facilitating rapid comprehension of existing leadership theories regardless of readers’ prior knowledge. It also incorporates environmental complexity and leader focus in a single framework.

An eccentricity gradient reversal across high-level visual cortex.

Human visual cortex contains regions selectively involved in perceiving and recognizing ecologically important visual stimuli such as people and places. Located in the ventral temporal lobe, these regions are organized consistently relative to cortical folding, a phenomenon thought to be inherited from how centrally or peripherally these stimuli are viewed with the retina. While this eccentricity theory of visual cortex has been one of the best descriptions of its functional organization, whether or not it accurately describes visual processing in all category-selective regions is not yet clear. Through a combination of behavioral and functional MRI measurements in 27 participants (17 females), we demonstrate that a limb-selective region neighboring well-studied face-selective regions shows tuning for the visual periphery in a cortical region originally thought to be centrally-biased. We demonstrate that the spatial computations performed by the limb-selective region are consistent with visual experience, and in doing so, make the novel observation that there may in fact be two eccentricity gradients, forming an eccentricity reversal across high-level visual cortex. These data expand the current theory of cortical organization to provide a unifying principle that explains the broad functional features of many visual regions, showing that viewing experience interacts with innate wiring principles to drive the location of cortical specialization.Significance Statement What is the organizing principle of high-level visual cortex? Visual stimuli experienced extensively during childhood, like faces or scenes, give rise to specialized regions in visual cortex. These regions emerge in consistent locations across individuals, thought to result from the retinotopic input of earlier visual cortex. The field has quantified this input as a medial-lateral gradient of retinotopic eccentricity in ventrotemporal cortex that has not yet been mapped beyond the fusiform gyrus. By performing receptive field mapping in limb-selective cortex for the first time we uncover a u-shaped eccentricity gradient which reverses near the lateral Fusiform. These findings produce a parsimonious model of cortical organization incorporating previously uncharacterized regions, offering a new organizing principle of high-level vision.

Russia as a Unifying Principle for the Global East and the Global North: Obstacles and Opportunities

Russia as a Unifying Principle for the Global East and the Global North: Obstacles and Opportunities

Molecular and cellular dynamics of squamous cell carcinomas across tissues.

Squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), arising from the skin, head and neck, lungs, esophagus, and cervix, are collectively among the most common cancers and a frequent cause of cancer morbidity and mortality. Despite distinct stratified epithelial tissues of origin, converging evidence points toward shared biologic pathways across SCCs. With recent breakthroughs in molecular technologies have come novel SCC treatment paradigms, including immunotherapies and targeted therapy. This review compares commonalities and differences across SCCs from different anatomical sites, including risk factors and genetics, as well as cellular and molecular programs driving tumorigenesis. We review landmark discoveries of the "cancer stem cells" (CSCs) that initiate and propagate SCCs and their gene and translational regulation programs. This has led to an appreciation that interactions between CSCs and the immune system play key roles in invasion and therapeutic resistance. Here, we review the unifying principles of SCCs that have emerged from these exciting advances in our understanding of these epithelial cancers.

Power, data and social accountability: defining a community-led monitoring model for strengthened health service delivery.

Despite international commitment to achieving the end of HIV as a public health threat, progress is off-track and existing gaps have been exacerbated by COVID-19's collision with existing pandemics. Born out of models of political accountability and historical healthcare advocacy led by people living with HIV, community-led monitoring (CLM) of health service delivery holds potential as a social accountability model to increase the accessibility and quality of health systems. However, the effectiveness of the CLM model in strengthening accountability and improving service delivery relies on its alignment with evidence-based principles for social accountability mechanisms. We propose a set of unifying principles for CLM to support the impact on the quality and availability of health services. Building on the social accountability literature, core CLM implementation principles are defined. CLM programmes include a community-led and independent data collection effort, in which the data tools and methodology are designed by service users and communities most vulnerable to, and most impacted by, service quality. Data are collected routinely, with an emphasis on prioritizing and protecting respondents, and are then be used to conduct routine and community-led advocacy, with the aim of increasing duty-bearer accountability to service users. CLM efforts should represent a broad and collective community response, led independently by impacted communities, incorporating both data collection and advocacy, and should be understood as a long-term approach to building meaningful engagement in systems-wide improvements rather than discrete interventions. The CLM model is an important social accountability mechanism for improving the responsiveness of critical health services and systems to communities. By establishing a collective understanding of CLM principles, this model paves the way for improved proliferation of CLM with fidelity of implementation approaches to core principles, rigorous examinations of CLM implementation approaches, impact assessments and evaluations of CLM's influence on service quality improvement.

AKT and the Hallmarks of Cancer.

Nearly a quarter century ago, Hanahan and Weinberg conceived six unifying principles explaining how normal cells transform into malignant tumors. Their provisional set of biological capabilities acquired during tumor development  cancer hallmarks  would evolve to fourteen tenets as knowledge of cancer genomes, molecular mechanisms, and the tumor microenvironment expanded, most recently adding four emerging enabling characteristics: phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic reprogramming, polymorphic microbiomes, and senescent cells. AKT kinases are critical signaling molecules that regulate cellular physiology upon receptor tyrosine kinases and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase activation. The complex branching of the AKT signaling network involves several critical downstream nodes that significantly magnify its functional impact, such that nearly every organ system and cell in the body may be affected by AKT activity. Conversely, tumor intrinsic dysregulation of AKT can have numerous adverse cellular and pathological ramifications, particularly in oncogenesis, as multiple tumor suppressors and oncogenic proteins regulate AKT signaling. Herein, we review the mounting evidence implicating the AKT pathway in the aggregate of currently recognized hallmarks of cancer underlying the complexities of human malignant diseases. The challenges, recent successes, and likely areas for exciting future advances in targeting this complex pathway are also discussed.

Unifying Principles of Generalization: Past, Present, and Future.

Generalization, defined as applying limited experiences to novel situations, represents a cornerstone of human intelligence. Our review traces the evolution and continuity of psychological theories of generalization, from its origins in concept learning (categorizing stimuli) and function learning (learning continuous input-output relationships) to domains such as reinforcement learning and latent structure learning. Historically, there have been fierce debates between approaches based on rule-based mechanisms, which rely on explicit hypotheses about environmental structure, and approaches based on similarity-based mechanisms, which leverage comparisons to prior instances. Each approach has unique advantages: Rules support rapid knowledge transfer, while similarity is computationally simple and flexible. Today, these debates have culminated in the development of hybrid models grounded in Bayesian principles, effectively marrying the precision of rules with the flexibility of similarity. The ongoing success of hybrid models not only bridges past dichotomies but also underscores the importance of integrating both rules and similarity for a comprehensive understanding of human generalization.

A modus operandi for sustainable-tourism transformations

ABSTRACT In this article, we identify and discuss unifying principles to co-design transformational sustainable-tourism interventions through participatory methodologies. We conduct a meta-ethnographic synthesis of the emerging relevant tourism literature (14 articles), and we propose five methodological requirements that underpin effective interventions for sustainable tourism transformations. The requirements are (1) co-creating actionable knowledge, (2) establishing safe spaces, (3) challenging power structures and managing emerging tensions, (4) shaping systemic synergies and (5) blurring the lines. Together, these requirements constitute a modus operandi – that is, a way of thinking and acting collectively that provides a unified foundation for impact-led, practice-oriented research on transformational sustainability in tourism. This modus operandi is a meta-perspective containing a cohesive set of guiding principles that integrate and elevate transformational methods, approaches and techniques, and represents our contribution to accelerating the field’s expansion.

Конституционная модернизация в странах СНГ: современные тенденции

The article analyzes the general features and some features of constitutional modernization in the CIS countries over the past five years. Attention is drawn to new principles, norms, and institutions introduced into constitutional texts. The conclusion is made about the strengthening of the national component in constitutional texts. A promising emerging trend is identified - the strengthening of collectivist aspirations and unifying principles in the constitutions of the CIS states.

Lies my child welfare system has told me: The critical importance of centering families' voices in family policing legal advocacy

AbstractThe web of law, regulation and policy which forms the modern day “child welfare” system is organized around one central unifying principle: the notion that these laws, regulations and policies are necessary to protect and save children. Yet an ever‐growing and overwhelming chorus of “lived experts” – individuals who have been impacted as a parent and/or child by what is more aptly called the family policing system – as well as by advocates and scholars, are drawing attention to the degree of harm the system causes to the families it purports to help. Even though the harms the family policing system causes are well known, the family policing system continues to justify these harms as warranted in the name of protecting children. More concerning, even well‐meaning advocates and scholars who acknowledge the harms, implicitly and explicitly continue to perpetuate the big lie that the family policing system's intention is benevolent and caring. The impetus for any law is a story; law identifies a problem and seeks to resolve it. But what happens when the story is false? The stories we tell about the need for family policing perpetuate harm and replicate systemic racism. Most importantly, the impact of these false narratives can be felt through generations of families leaving devastated communities. The stories, perspectives and opinions of those most impacted by the system historically have been, and continue to be, intentionally left out of the making of law and policy, and even in the teaching of the law. Unless the actual perspectives of families are present to challenge the stories that are woven into the law, these narratives will continue to create significant obstacles to critical thought about the law, prevent meaningful legal change, and ultimately cause continued harm to families and communities. In this essay, in the tradition of participatory law scholarship (Note: Rachel Lopez, Participatory Law Scholarship, 123 Colum. L. Rev. 1795 (2023) [“Participatory Law Scholarship or (PLS)… is an emerging genre of legal scholarship written in collaboration with authors… who have no formal training in the law but rather expertise in its function and dysfunction through lived experience.”]), the authors, a parent and professional advocate, and a clinical law professor and attorney, seek to unpack the myths which are built into the laws of family policing. In reckoning with these myths, the paper seeks to propose a critical framework to both acknowledge the intentional trauma and harm caused by the family policing system, and to disrupt and dismantle the fictions that are the underpinnings of the laws and regulations that continue to perpetuate these harms. Ultimately, this paper argues that by centering the lived expertise of families' voices and perspectives in legal advocacy, we can form a cogent vision for true safety for families and communities.

The Infl uence of Trickster Behavior in the Media Space on the Dynamics of Cultural Industries

The trend of media consumption in recent years has been the sharp interest of the mass audience in communication and entertainment. This practice can also be traced in the dynamics of the development of cultural industries, where the emergence of new words (“blog”, “podcast”, “hashtag”, etc.) is noted. This indicates that the media continues to play a huge role in the production and preferences of certain cultural products. Under the infl uence of mediatization, there is a steady demand for behavioral models that, based on humor, irony or deception, contribute to changing the existing order. One of these models is trickster behavior. Such actions in the society of impressions are perceived as a form of entertainment. The purpose of this article is to attempt a philosophical understanding of such transformations in public consciousness and media consumption in the context of cultural and economic dynamics. My thesis is that the trickster, who is a universal archetypal fi gure immersed in a socio-cultural context, plays an important role both in mythology and in religion, culture, media, economics, and politics. It serves as a unifying principle in the process of forming the social memory of peoples, exposing the negative qualities of man and society, showing the level of existing values and morality. Sociocultural, semiotic, historiosophical, communicative and psychoanalytic approaches have been applied to the study of trickster behavior. As a result of the research, manipulative tactics used by tricksters in the media space have been identifi ed, which make it possible to implement a strategy of theatricality: in behavior and speech on the verge of “norm – outrageousness”, an unconventional vision of the situation, a reaction to the challenges of social reality, the introduction of new cultural mythologies into public consciousness. The infl uence of their actions on the formation of sociocultural stereotypes is noted. The study expands the understanding of trickster behavior through the prism of established trends in media consumption and reproduction of cultural products (movies, games, blogs, performances by media personalities, etc.). The relevance of the trickster model of behavior is justifi ed by the digitalization and mediatization of the space of human existence. Keywords: trickster, trickster behavior, cultural industries, archetype, cultural mythologies

Albanian first-year university students’ knowledge and acceptance of evolution

Evolutionary theory provides the foundation for modern biology with evolution as a core concept and unifying principle. This research aimed to examine evolutionary knowledge and acceptance among first-year university students. The<b> </b>participants considered for analysis consisted of 87 students enrolled in the first-year bachelor’s in biology and biotechnology at the University of Tirana, Albania. The respondents’ average age was 18.95 ± 0.78 years, with a pronounced dominance of females (90.2%). The study used the standardized research instrument “evolution education questionnaire on acceptance and knowledge” to measure knowledge and acceptance about evolution in an international context. We employed descriptive statistics to analyze the collected data.<b> </b>The findings of research revealed that over half of the respondents, 61%, fall into the ‘<i>very low knowledge</i>’ category on evolution and none fall in the ‘<i>high knowledge</i>’ category. Only 60.9% accept evolution. The need for a revision of the evolutionary concepts and topics in the curricula, from primary school, is recommended coupled with the incorporation of philosophical dialogue into teaching practice.

Гуманитаризация экологии как метод борьбы с экологическим кризисом

The article is devoted to the analysis of the current modern trend in environmental science – the humanitarization of ecology, in which the author sees a new way to combat the environmental crisis. Practice shows that the existing measures to combat the crisis are not effective enough. It seems more appropriate to act through the formation of environmental consciousness and environmental culture, in the structure of which the emotional and personal component, empathy, and aesthetic attitude to nature play a crucial role. Modern man is catastrophically alienated from nature, his environment has long been irreducible to the natural one, it includes cultural, social and symbolic environments. The unifying methodological principle for a range of environmental disciplines, including the humanities (ecology of the visual and digital environment, ecology of language, ecology of culture) is the environmental approach. Not opposing culture, but refracting in cultural contexts, nature at a new, more meaningful level, should be included in the life world of modern man. Methods of the humanities are actively penetrating ecology. The author comes to the conclusion that the humanization of ecology helps to combat the ecological crisis through a new approach to nature (through understanding, experience, and not explanation).

Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy and Dilemmas of Demanded Change: A Critical Study of Swaraj in Light of Neo-Vedanta

One of the legacies of Western philosophical thought has been its evolution through movements and slogans such as modernism, postmodernism, existentialism and analyticism. These popular intellectual standpoints have contributed to making Western culture more dialogical and progressive. However, in contrast, exploration of socio-philosophical movements within the Indian philosophical tradition, except for ancient times, remains relatively uncharted territory. Acknowledging this variance, the present article investigates the evolution of contemporary Indian philosophy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines the core unifying principle that bound together eminent figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, K. C. Bhattacharyya and numerous others of their category, all classified as Neo-Vedantists. Precisely, the philosophy or movement under scrutiny is Swaraj, illuminated through the lens of Neo-Vedanta, presenting a distinctive perspective on human values and change.

YEW-KWANG NG THE UTILITARIAN: AN APPRECIATION

The most important insight of Yew-Kwang Ng as a scholar is the single idea that welfare dictates humanity and the other sentient beings as well. This idea serves as the unifying principle that runs through the lion’s share of significant contributions by Ng, as an outstanding defender and an innovative modern theorist of utilitarianism, to a good number of literatures in economics and beyond.

Space is a latent sequence: A theory of the hippocampus.

Fascinating phenomena such as landmark vector cells and splitter cells are frequently discovered in the hippocampus. Without a unifying principle, each experiment seemingly uncovers new anomalies or coding types. Here, we provide a unifying principle that the mental representation of space is an emergent property of latent higher-order sequence learning. Treating space as a sequence resolves numerous phenomena and suggests that the place field mapping methodology that interprets sequential neuronal responses in Euclidean terms might itself be a source of anomalies. Our model, clone-structured causal graph (CSCG), employs higher-order graph scaffolding to learn latent representations by mapping aliased egocentric sensory inputs to unique contexts. Learning to compress sequential and episodic experiences using CSCGs yields allocentric cognitive maps that are suitable for planning, introspection, consolidation, and abstraction. By explicating the role of Euclidean place field mapping and demonstrating how latent sequential representations unify myriad observed phenomena, our work positions the hippocampus in a sequence-centric paradigm, challenging the prevailing space-centric view.

Contrast in larval sensitivity to low pH in sea urchins from neighbouring seagrass meadows at Inhaca Island, Mozambique

Ocean acidification presents a major threat to marine life, and a large body of evidence has documented its negative effects on various marine species and ecosystems. Recent meta-analyses highlight the key role of local adaptation and have linked species’ sensitivity to extremes of the present range of pH variability. More specifically, ‘physiological tipping points’ can be correlated with the lowest experienced pH where the organisms live. We verified this hypothesis by comparing the responses of larvae of the collector urchin Tripneustes gratilla originating from two neighbouring seagrass meadows at Inhaca Island in southern Mozambique. The two seagrass meadows experience different conditions: the site at the Inhaca Marine Biology Research Station (Estação de Biologia Marítima de Inhaca, EBMI) is subtidal, and the site at Banguá is intertidal. Larvae of adults collected from the two sites were cultured in the laboratory under four different target pH treatments (8.04, 7.67, 7.46 and 7.29) for 7 days. The results showed an overall negative effect of lower pH on survival and growth as well as on an index of symmetry. Larvae originating from the intertidal seagrass habitat at Banguá which experiences large pH fluctuations were more sensitive to a lower pH than those from the subtidal seagrass habitat at EBMI. This finding suggests that different mechanisms for pH tolerance and local adaptation may apply in subtidal versus intertidal environments. Consequently, the unifying principle that physiological tipping points are correlated with the extreme low pH in the present range of variability, may reach its limit in increasingly extreme environments under natural conditions.

Tissue Active Matter: Integrating Mechanics and Signaling into Dynamical Models.

The importance of physical forces in the morphogenesis, homeostatic function, and pathological dysfunction of multicellular tissues is being increasingly characterized, both theoretically and experimentally. Analogies between biological systems and inert materials such as foams, gels, and liquid crystals have provided striking insights into the core design principles underlying multicellular organization. However, these connections can seem surprising given that a key feature of multicellular systems is their ability to constantly consume energy, providing an active origin for the forces that they produce. Key emerging questions are, therefore, to understand whether and how this activity grants tissues novel properties that do not have counterparts in classical materials, as well as their consequences for biological function. Here, we review recent discoveries at the intersection of active matter and tissue biology, with an emphasis on how modeling and experiments can be combined to understand the dynamics of multicellular systems. These approaches suggest that a number of key biological tissue-scale phenomena, such as morphogenetic shape changes, collective migration, or fate decisions, share unifying design principles that can be described by physical models of tissue active matter.

Rigidity percolation and active advection synergize in the actomyosin cortex to drive amoeboid cell motility.

Spontaneous locomotion is a common feature of most metazoan cells, generally attributed to the properties of actomyosin networks. This force-producing machinery has been studied down to the most minute molecular details, especially in lamellipodium-driven migration. Nevertheless, how actomyosin networks work inside contraction-driven amoeboid cells still lacks unifying principles. Here, using stable motile blebs from HeLa cells as a model amoeboid motile system, we imaged the dynamics of the actin cortex at the single filament level and revealed the co-existence of three distinct rheological phases. We introduce "advected percolation," a process where rigidity percolation and active advection synergize, spatially organizing the actin network's mechanical properties into a minimal and generic locomotion mechanism. Expanding from our observations on simplified systems, we speculate that this model could explain, down to the single actin filament level, how amoeboid cells, such as cancer or immune cells, can propel efficiently through complex 3D environments.

NS5-brane backgrounds and coset CFT partition functions

Worldsheet string theory is solvable for a variety of backgrounds involving Neveu-Schwarz fivebranes, in terms of gauged nonlinear sigma models on group manifolds. We compute the worldsheet torus partition function of these models, and propose gauging of null isometries as a unifying principle and conceptual framework for this large family of string backgrounds. In the process, we explain how partition functions of asymmetrically gauged Wess-Zumino-Witten models can be computed from the path integral, and organize and systematize various results scattered throughout the literature.