Has the Whitehall Model survived?

The expression 'Whitehall Model' has a certain heuristic value for describing four key features of the British civil service, namely political neutrality, generalism, life-long career paths and a strong policy advisory role. This model has been challenged by politicization, changes in career management and recruitment as well as increasing competition from other sources of policy advice. The UK civil service's role in relation to ministers seems to have become increasingly defined in managerial terms and decreasingly as policy advisers, not least because a range of other individuals and bodies (advisers, consultants, think tanks, party research departments) now share this role. While it appears to be enjoying a diminishing policy role, the senior civil service has not, at least so far, managed to occupy the high ground in its managerial role. The biggest change in the model is a collapse of confidence in the civil service, not only among citizens, but also among politicians and civil servants themselves

Rheo-NMR : Applications to food

Typical consumer products such as ketchup, mayonnaise, hair gel, and coffee powder display a combination of solid-like and fluid-like properties. The shear flow behavior of these materials is usually examined with a rheometer, which in the simplest case provides a fluid viscosity as a function of the applied shear stress or strain rate. Traditional rheometry, however, does not provide information about the microscopic phenomena that underlie the apparent bulk flow behavior. Rheo- NMR, a combination between rheology and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methodology, allows measurement and characterization of microscopic phenomena in the gap of shear geometries such as the Couette or cone-plate. Most notably, it provides access to the fluid velocity profile across the shear gap, the shape of which contains information about yield stress, shear thinning and thickening properties of the fluid, and flow heterogeneities. This chapter explores the basic concepts of rheology and rheo-NMR and illustrates the use of rheo- NMR to gain insight in the flow of food systems in two brief case studies.</p

Inactivation of a Gαs–PKA tumour suppressor pathway in skin stem cells initiates basal-cell carcinogenesis

Genomic alterations in GNAS, the gene coding for the Gαs heterotrimeric G protein, are associated with a large number of human diseases. Here, we explored the role of Gαs on stem cell fate decisions by using the mouse epidermis as a model system. Conditional epidermal deletion of Gnas or repression of PKA signalling caused a remarkable expansion of the stem cell compartment, resulting in rapid basal-cell carcinoma formation. In contrast, inducible expression of active Gαs in the epidermis caused hair follicle stem cell exhaustion and hair loss. Mechanistically, we found that Gαs-PKA disruption promotes the cell autonomous Sonic Hedgehog pathway stimulation and Hippo signalling inhibition, resulting in the non-canonical activation of GLI and YAP1. Our study highlights an important tumour suppressive function of Gαs-PKA, limiting the proliferation of epithelial stem cells and maintaining proper hair follicle homeostasis. These findings could have broad implications in multiple pathophysiological conditions, including cancer