University of Hawaii at Manoa

About: University of Hawaii at Manoa is a education organization based out in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Sea surface temperature. The organization has 13693 authors who have published 25161 publications receiving 1023924 citations.

Collaborative leadership and school improvement: understanding the impact on school capacity and student learning

Abstract: Fifty years of theory and research offer increasing levels of support for the assertion that principal leadership makes a difference in the quality of schooling, school development and student learning In the current context of global education reform, however, recent inquiries have focused on identifying how teams of school leaders contribute to school improvement and student learning This chapter reports on findings drawn from a series of empirical analyses that assessed the effects of collaborative leadership on school improvement capacity and student learning in a large sample of primary schools in the state of Hawaii over a 4-year period Our findings support the prevailing view that collaborative school leadership can positively affect student learning in reading and math through building the school’s capacity for academic improvement The research further extends this finding, however, by offering empirical support for a more refined conception that casts leadership for student learning as a process of mutual influence in which school capacity both shapes and is shaped by the school’s collective leadership

Incomplete reactivation of Oct4-related genes in mouse embryos cloned from somatic nuclei.

Abstract: The majority of cloned animals derived by nuclear transfer from somatic cell nuclei develop to the blastocyst stage but die after implantation. Mouse embryos that lack an Oct4 gene, which plays an essential role in control of developmental pluripotency, develop to the blastocyst stage and also die after implantation, because they lack pluripotent embryonic cells. Based on this similarity, we posited that cloned embryos derived from differentiated cell nuclei fail to establish a population of truly pluripotent embryonic cells because of faulty reactivation of key embryonic genes such as Oct4. To explore this hypothesis, we used an in silico approach to identify a set of Oct4-related genes whose developmental expression pattern is similar to that of Oct4. When expression of Oct4 and 10 Oct4-related genes was analyzed in individual cumulus cell-derived cloned blastocysts, only 62% correctly expressed all tested genes. In contrast to this incomplete reactivation of Oct4-related genes in somatic clones, ES cell-derived cloned blastocysts and normal control embryos expressed these genes normally. Notably, the contrast between expression patterns of the Oct4-related genes correlated with efficiency of embryonic development of somatic and ES cell-derived cloned blastocysts to term. These observations suggest that failure to reactivate the full spectrum of these Oct4-related genes may contribute to embryonic lethality in somatic-cell clones.

El Niño on the Devil's Staircase: Annual Subharmonic Steps to Chaos

Abstract: The source of irregularity in El Nino, the large interannual climate variation of the Pacific ocean-atmosphere system, has remained elusive. Results from an El Nino model exhibit transition to chaos through a series of frequency-locked steps created by nonlinear resonance with the Earth's annual cycle. The overlapping of these resonances leads to the chaotic behavior. This transition scenario explains a number of climate model results and produces spectral characteristics consistent with currently available data.

Further segregation analysis of the fragile X syndrome with special reference to transmitting males

Abstract: A new series of 96 pedigrees with the fra(X) syndrome was analysed using complex segregation analysis with pointers, defining affection as any degree of mental impairment. These families were found to exhibit the same segregation pattern as the first series of 110 pedigrees (Sherman et al. 1984). The best estimate for penetrance of mental impairment in males was 79% and in females was 35% for the combined data. Again, there was little evidence for sporadic cases among affected males. Many more intellectually normal transmitting males have been observed since the existence of such males and the concomitant need to investigate the paternal side of pedigrees was recognized. On further investigation of all 206 pedigrees from the old and new data sets, the sibships of nonexpressing males appeared to be different from those of expressing males. Our analysis, using mental impairment as the phenotype, suggested that obligate carrier mothers and daughters of intellectually normal transmitting males are rarely, if ever, mentally impaired and that the sibs of transmitting males are much less likely to be retarded than the sibs of mentally impaired males. Though mothers and daughters of transmitting males are similar in phenotype, the expression of the gene in their offspring appears to be different: the penetrance of mental impairment is higher in offspring of intellectually normal daughters of transmitting males than in offspring of intellectually normal mothers of transmitting males. The implications of these observations for genetic counseling and for genetic models of the fra(X) syndrome are discussed.