The relationship between national culture and safety culture: implications for international safety culture assessments

In this article we examine the relationship between safety culture and national culture, and the implications of this relationship for international safety culture assessments. Focussing on Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance (UA) index, a survey study of 13,616 Air Traffic Management (ATM) employees in 21 European countries found a negative association between safety culture and national norm data for uncertainty avoidance. This is theorized to reflect the influence of national tendencies for uncertainty avoidance upon attitudes and practices for managing safety (e.g., anxiety on risk; reliance on protocols; concerns over reporting incidents; openness to different perspectives). The relationship between uncertainty avoidance and safety culture is likely to have implications for international safety culture assessments. Specifically, benchmarking exercises will consistently indicate safety management within organizations in high UA countries to be poorer than low UA countries due to the influence of national culture upon safety practices, which may limit opportunities for identifying and sharing best practice. We propose the use of safety culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores to statistically adjust for the influence of uncertainty avoidance upon safety culture data, and to support the identification of safety practices effective and particular to low or high UA cultures

Safety sans frontières: an international safety culture model

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organisations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management industry (ATM) were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5176) and management staff (n = 1230). Through employing multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede’s five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organisational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice

Delivering energy efficiency and carbon reduction schemes in England: Lessons from Green Deal Pioneer Places

Against a background of growing international and national carbon reduction legislation, the UK government introduced the “Green Deal” to deliver a significant increase in housing energy efficiency and reduction in carbon emissions. This paper reflects on one English local authority's experience delivering a programme intended to foster local interest in the Green Deal. Drawing on social surveys and pre and post Green Deal intervention interviews with five demonstrator homes (households that applied to receive a Green Deal package fully funded by the scheme, providing a test bed for the Green Deal recruitment and installation process), this paper shows that awareness and understanding of the Green Deal scheme is low. There is opposition to the cost of finance offered but a strong interest in improving household warmth and for funding improvements through payments added to the electricity bill. Demonstrator home residents perceived Green Deals had improved the warmth and quality of their home, but saving money was the primary motivator for their involvement, not increasing warmth. Whilst Green Deal has not delivered the level of success that was hoped, much can be learned from the scheme to improve future energy efficiency schemes that will be necessary to deliver emission reduction commitments

Comparative proteomic profiling reveals mechanisms for early spinal cord vulnerability in CLN1 disease

CLN1 disease is a fatal inherited neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disease of early childhood, caused by mutations in the CLN1 gene, which encodes the enzyme Palmitoyl protein thioesterase-1 (PPT-1). We recently found significant spinal pathology in Ppt1-deficient (Ppt1−/−) mice and human CLN1 disease that contributes to clinical outcome and precedes the onset of brain pathology. Here, we quantified this spinal pathology at 3 and 7 months of age revealing significant and progressive glial activation and vulnerability of spinal interneurons. Tandem mass tagged proteomic analysis of the spinal cord of Ppt1−/−and control mice at these timepoints revealed a significant neuroimmune response and changes in mitochondrial function, cell-signalling pathways and developmental processes. Comparing proteomic changes in the spinal cord and cortex at 3 months revealed many similarly affected processes, except the inflammatory response. These proteomic and pathological data from this largely unexplored region of the CNS may help explain the limited success of previous brain-directed therapies. These data also fundamentally change our understanding of the progressive, site-specific nature of CLN1 disease pathogenesis, and highlight the importance of the neuroimmune response. This should greatly impact our approach to the timing and targeting of future therapeutic trials for this and similar disorders

Overview of Current Drugs and Molecules in Development for Spinal Muscular Atrophy Therapy

The full text of this article can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-018-0868-

Bioenergetic status modulates motor neuron vulnerability and pathogenesis in a zebrafish model of spinal muscular atrophy

Degeneration and loss of lower motor neurons is the major pathological hallmark of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), resulting from low levels of ubiquitously-expressed survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. One remarkable, yet unresolved, feature of SMA is that not all motor neurons are equally affected, with some populations displaying a robust resistance to the disease. Here, we demonstrate that selective vulnerability of distinct motor neuron pools arises from fundamental modifications to their basal molecular profiles. Comparative gene expression profiling of motor neurons innervating the extensor digitorum longus (disease-resistant), gastrocnemius (intermediate vulnerability), and tibialis anterior (vulnerable) muscles in mice revealed that disease susceptibility correlates strongly with a modified bioenergetic profile. Targeting of identified bioenergetic pathways by enhancing mitochondrial biogenesis rescued motor axon defects in SMA zebrafish. Moreover, targeting of a single bioenergetic protein, phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (Pgk1), was found to modulate motor neuron vulnerability in vivo. Knockdown of pgk1 alone was sufficient to partially mimic the SMA phenotype in wild-type zebrafish. Conversely, Pgk1 overexpression, or treatment with terazosin (an FDA-approved small molecule that binds and activates Pgk1), rescued motor axon phenotypes in SMA zebrafish. We conclude that global bioenergetics pathways can be therapeutically manipulated to ameliorate SMA motor neuron phenotypes in vivo