Improving reading compliance with whole class qualitative quiz questions

“Have you done your reading?” If you are a teaching academic that always gets positive responses to this question then you are in a very fortunate (or talented) minority. This small case study draws on existing research into why students do not read and evaluations of strategies designed to combat this phenomenon. It reflects on an ad hoc trial of randomly targeted quiz questions to two seminar groups of first year undergraduates within the Business Faculty. The trial spanned seven weeks and sought to improve previously poor levels of reading compliance. The study found that, within a short period, the technique employed significantly increased levels of reading compliance measured across the whole group through qualitative comprehension questions

How might trade unions use their voice to engage in the whistleblowing process?

This paper addresses the question ‘How might trade unions use their voice to engage in the whistleblowing process?’ the paper asserts that, although there are some contextual differences, the voice mechanisms in the UK, Norway and The Netherlands are comparable. the chapter concludes by suggesting how trade unions might use these mechanisms. At an individual level they can support whistleblowers with individual voice options. At regulator level they can work with organisations to improve understanding and conditions for whistleblowers and at public level they can use their voice to inform the wider community about the whistleblower’s particular concern or treatment

Whistleblowing: the role of trade unions

Whistleblowing occurs predominantly within the workplace by individuals seeking to raise a concern. Trade unions seek to support their members in the workplace and more broadly in society. As such, we might expect that trade unions engage by supporting members who wish to blow the whistle. However, there is little prior research on the role trade unions have in the field of whistleblowing. This thesis seeks to explore this topic. It considers both the internal role within the workplace, namely advisory, supporting, collective bargaining and engagement in policy, and the external role within society, specifically focused on engagement with other organisations, collective bargaining and political lobbying. Drawing on interviews with trade union representatives and whistleblowing experts, document and website analysis, parliamentary debates and a dataset from a whistleblowing advice line, the thesis takes a pragmatic approach to investigate the phenomenon. While the thesis focuses on the United Kingdom, it draws on data from Norway and the Netherlands to highlight where differences in approach and engagement might exist. The thesis finds that trade unions currently play a limited role in supporting whistleblowing and sets up four paradoxes that arise in relation to their engagement. This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to the wider whistleblowing literature by identifying an alternative approach to addressing the victimisation whistleblowers face. It also questions the linear three-tier approach to trade unions and whistleblowing suggested in the literature. Finally, it develops our understanding of the voice literature and how whistleblowing fits into this by suggesting that the collective voice of trade unions needs to be considered as a mediating factor in individual voice processes

Who is speaking please? the role of identity in attitudes towards whistleblowing

Whistleblowers have been associated with words such as saint (Grant, 2002), traitor (Rothschild and Miethe, 1999), parrhesiast (e.g. Weiskopf and Tobias -Miersch, 2016), stigma (Van Portfliet, 2020) and a plethora of other terms. The increasing implementation of legislation to protect whistleblowers hints at a societal acceptance and acknowledgment of importance for them, yet stories consistently emerge in the media of the mistreatment and suffering experienced when one speaks out about organizational wrongdoing. How do people actually feel about whistleblowing and whistleblowers? In this paper, we explore this question, by drawing on data from surveys conducted in the UK, Australia and Ireland. Analysing responses from employers and managers/directors of organizations, and comparing these with the responses of employees of organizations yields surprisingly different results. Investigating this, we propose that how one “feels” about whistleblowing depends on what role they are occupying when they are asked. Employers tend to be more optimistic and sympathetic, and employees tend to be more critical. While the ambiguity in attitudes has been noted (Hersch, 2002, Heumann, et al, 2016) studies have highlighted how these change based on, for example, the content of the disclosure and whom the report is made to (Callahan and Collins, 1992), one’s value orientation (Park et al. 2014), and one’s cultural orientation (Park, et al, 2008). We build on these valuable studies, proposing that in addition to these influences, perceptions may be more fluid, potentially changing within individuals as their roles shift. Our contribution is then two-fold. To theory, we offer implications for a more nuanced way of understanding societal attitudes to whistleblowing, and to practice, we offer potential insights to how protections may be more or less effective, depending on who is being called on to support the whistleblower

Tumour growth in mice resistant to diet-induced obesity

Obesity is a chronic disease with associated increases in the incidence, and a reduction in survival, of many cancer types. Obesity results from an imbalance in calorie intake and calorie requirement. This study aimed to investigate the separate effects of high-fat diet and obesity on cancer in an animal model resistant to diet-induced obesity. Male BALB/c mice fed long-term on a high-fat, Western-style diet were implanted with syngeneic CT26 colon adenocarcinoma cells and compared to mice fed normal diet. BALB/c mice on high-fat diet were 10% heavier than mice fed normal diet, with no difference in tumour growth rates or tumour cell proliferation. Subgroups of mice that became obese on high-fat diet, however, showed increased tumour growth rates compared to mice fed normal diet, whereas mice that remained slim showed no difference in tumour growth. Protein arrays identified several adipokines that were expressed at different levels, including serum Tissue Inhibitors of Metallo-Proteinases (TIMP-1) and tumour C-Reactive Protein (CRP). In conclusion, tumour growth was enhanced in mice unable to resist obesity, and adipokine profiles were affected by the animals’ ability to resist obesity

Down syndrome is an oxidative phosphorylation disorder

Down syndrome is the most common genomic disorder of intellectual disability and is caused by trisomy of chromosome 21. Several genes in this chromosome repress mitochondrial biogenesis. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether early overexpression of these genes may cause a prenatal impairment of oxidative phosphorylation negatively affecting neurogenesis. Reduction in the mitochondrial energy production and a lower mitochondrial function have been reported in diverse tissues or cell types, and also at any age, including early fetuses, suggesting that a defect in oxidative phosphorylation is an early and general event in Down syndrome individuals. Moreover, many of the medical conditions associated with Down syndrome are also frequently found in patients with oxidative phosphorylation disease. Several drugs that enhance mitochondrial biogenesis are nowadays available and some of them have been already tested in mouse models of Down syndrome restoring neurogenesis and cognitive defects. Because neurogenesis relies on a correct mitochondrial function and critical periods of brain development occur mainly in the prenatal and early neonatal stages, therapeutic approaches intended to improve oxidative phosphorylation should be provided in these periods.Funding sources: This work was supported by grants from Instituto de Salud Carlos III [FIS-PI17/00021, FIS-PI17/00166]; Fundación Mutua Madrileña [MMA17/01]; Precipita-FECYT crowdfunding program [PR194]; Gobierno de Aragón [LMP135_18, Grupos Consolidados B33_17R] and FEDER 2014–2020 “Construyendo Europa desde Aragón”. CIBERER is an initiative of the ISCIII

Whistleblowing as a protracted process: a study of UK whistleblower journeys

This paper provides an exploration of whistleblowing as a protracted process, using secondary da-ta from 868 cases from a whistleblower advice line in the UK. Previous research on whistleblow-ing has mainly studied this phenomenon as a one-off decision by someone perceiving wrongdoing within an organisation to raise a concern or to remain silent. Earlier suggestions that whistleblowing is a process and that people find themselves inadvertently turned into whistleblowers by management responses, has not been followed up by a systematic study tracking the path of how a concern is repeatedly raised by whistleblowers. This paper provides a quantitative exploration of whistleblowing as a protracted process, rather than a one-off decision. Our research finds that the whistleblowing process generally entails two or even three internal at-tempts to raise a concern before an external attempt is made, if it is made at all. We also find that it is necessary to distinguish further between different internal (e.g. line manager, higher management, specialist channels) as well as external whistleblowing recipients (e.g. regulators, professional bodies, journalists). Our findings suggest that whistleblowing is a protracted process and that this process is internally more protracted than previously documented. The overall pattern is that whistleblowers tend to search for a more independent recipient at each successive attempt to raise their concern. Formal whistleblower power seems to determine which of the available recipients are perceived as viable, and also what the initial responses are in terms of retaliation and effectiveness