Perceived leadership soft skills and trustworthiness of deans in three Malaysian public universities

Soft skills comprised both rational and emotional elements, becoming a new focus on leadership, as behavior displayed during interaction with other individuals will affect effective interaction outcomes. This study aimed to examine the leadership soft skills of deans in public universities of Malaysia. This survey designed research was performed to investigate the relationship between the eight components of leadership soft skills composed of collaboration/teamwork, communication skills, initiative, leadership ability, people development/coaching, personal effectiveness/personal mastery, planning and organizing and presentation skills with perceived trustworthiness. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the Crosbie’s model of leadership soft skills and Mayer, Davis and Schoorman’s model of organizational trust. A total of 376 support staff grade 17–36 was selected as respondents through stratified sampling technique. The method of analysis used are mean score, standard deviation, Pearson correlation and multiple regression Stepwise. Findings indicated that deans implemented moderately all the eight components of leadership soft skills. Perceived trustworthiness were significantly related with all the eight components of leadership soft skills at significance level of 0.01. The significant predictors for perceived trustworthiness were communication skills, planning and organizing and presentation skills. Finally, this study also provided recommendations and suggestions for future research.     

Combinatorial Determination of Ischemia Modified Albumin and Protein Carbonyl in the Diagnosis of NonST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction

Ischemia modified albumin (IMA) and Protein Carbonyl (PC) have known as proteins that are modified on the similar basis of oxidative stress induced protein modification and may have diagnostic potential in acute myocardial infarction. This study aims to evaluate the ability of using IMA and PC content to diagnose Non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) and efficiency of combining these two markers. Serum from NSTEMI and healthy control were determined for serum IMA and PC content. The results showed that both of serum IMA level and PC content in NSTEMI was significantly higher than that of healthy controls. However, the PC content showed greater diagnostic performance than IMA. Combinatorial determination of serum IMA level with PC content level was enhanced test efficiency. In conclusion, our finding demonstrated that IMA and PC content can be used as a diagnostic marker for NSTEMI.