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    Intersectional Incivility in Aviation: Socio-Spatial Relation, Constrained Agency, and Safety Reporting
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-06-12) Ram, Angeline
    Background: In Canadian air transportation organizations, employee safety reporting programs (ESRPs) are used as formal channels for all workers, including aircraft maintenance engineers and pilots, to raise occupational health and safety and aviation safety management system concerns. However, reportable issues are narrowly defined, so workplace incivility falls outside of sector safety reporting criteria. Although participation in ESRPs is framed as a moral duty within non-punitive, policy-driven safety cultures, policies do not necessarily create environments where workers feel safe to speak up. Instead, workers navigate these environments through constrained agency, intentionally remaining silent. In many cases, workers prioritize coping strategies that support their wellbeing over participation in formal reporting systems. From a labor geography perspective, this gap reflects how socio-spatial relations, shaped by culture, hierarchy, and colonial, imperial, and patriarchal legacies, normalize incivility. Though the Canadian air transportation sector has largely treated workers as a homogeneous group, further investigation is necessary to understand how socio-spatial relations, intersectional identities, and constrained agency shape workplace experiences, wellbeing, and participation in safety reporting. Objectives: Most sector literature examines gender-based incivilities experienced by women pilots through a homogeneous lens, assuming identical experiences regardless of race, occupation, immigration status, or sexual orientation. Workers’ experiences shaped by intersectional identities (race, gender, occupation, occupational status, immigration status, sexual orientation) remain under-examined. Situated within feminist epistemologies, this research asks: How do the lived experiences of air transportation workers in Ontario shape their participation in Employee Safety Reporting (ESR)? Objectives are: 1) explore how occupational identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; 2) explore how intersectional identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; and 3) investigate how identity-based incivility shapes ESR participation. Methodology: This exploratory qualitative research draws on labor and feminist geographies and Black intersectionality theory to expose power relations and agency. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers of diverse statuses and identities. Interviews were video- and audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed in NVivo. Analysis used Hollinda et al.’s (2023) blended methods (summative content analysis + thematic analysis) and draws on Nash (2018) to use intersectionality as a methodological tool to generate inter-categorical profiles. Findings and Discussion: Three findings emerged: 1) occupational hierarchies shape incivility and wellbeing; 2) socio-spatial relations through incivility target intersectional identities, and shape wellbeing; and 3) incivility constrains agency, leading to coping over reporting. Workers in the same occupation are not monoliths: interlocking identities shape who is targeted, and incivility shapes how wellbeing is experienced. AMEs reported more identity-based incivility than pilots, and wellbeing impacts increased as occupational status decreased, reflecting power geometries that normalize disrespect toward subordinates. Incivility influenced wellbeing through six connected subthemes: stress and anxiety, frustration and powerlessness, exclusion, obsessing about interactions, self-doubt, and adverse effects on home life. Rather than reporting iv through ESRPs, workers, especially in lower-status roles, used constrained agency to protect wellbeing through overlapping coping strategies of adaptation, tolerance, and withdrawal. These strategies reflect a transaction in which employment security or advancement can outweigh the perceived benefits of reporting, challenging assumptions that policy requirements alone ensure participation. Conclusion: Socio-spatial relations among AMEs and pilots are shaped by hierarchical histories and colonial and patriarchal cultures that normalize identity-based incivility. When workers are targeted because of their intersectional identities, their already constrained agency becomes further limited, and they cope in ways that support their wellbeing rather than participate in safety reporting. Organizations need to integrate psychological safety into Safety Management Systems (SMS) as a foundational aspect of safety across teams and daily operations, and the sector should view workers through an intersectional lens, as occupational status and intersecting identities shape both exposure to incivility and the capacity to raise concerns. Policymakers must address the gap in which normalized incivility continues to cause distress and deter reporting. Recommendations include revising SMS and safety culture requirements to encompass employee wellbeing; training leaders and crews to recognize and address subtle incivility; and linking occupational health reports with safety data to ensure accountability, follow-up, and ongoing evaluation.
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    The weight of a guilty conscience: Subjective body weight as an embodiment of guilt
    (Public Library of Science, 2013-07-31) Day, Martin V.; Bobocel, D. Ramona
    Guilt is an important social and moral emotion. In addition to feeling unpleasant, guilt is metaphorically described as a "weight on one's conscience." Evidence from the field of embodied cognition suggests that abstract metaphors may be grounded in bodily experiences, but no prior research has examined the embodiment of guilt. Across four studies we examine whether i) unethical acts increase subjective experiences of weight, ii) feelings of guilt explain this effect, and iii) whether there are consequences of the weight of guilt. Studies 1-3 demonstrated that unethical acts led to more subjective body weight compared to control conditions. Studies 2 and 3 indicated that heightened feelings of guilt mediated the effect, whereas other negative emotions did not. Study 4 demonstrated a perceptual consequence. Specifically, an induction of guilt affected the perceived effort necessary to complete tasks that were physical in nature, compared to minimally physical tasks.
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    Neuregulin unregulates microglial α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor expression in immortalized cell lines: Implications for regulating neuroinflammation
    (Public Library of Science, 2013-07-30) Mencel, Malwina; Nash, Michelle; Jacobson, Christian
    Neuregulin, previously known as ARIA, is a signaling protein involved in cell survival, synaptic plasticity, cell communication and differentiation. Neuregulin has also been described as a potent inducer of acetylcholine receptor transcription in muscle and although both neuregulin and acetylcholine have been individually described to have neuroprotective roles, their relationship in the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway of the brain has not been examined. Using three cell lines, BV-2, EOC-20 and RAW 264.7, we investigated the role that neuregulin signaling through the Erb family of tyrosine kinases may play in the anti-inflammatory process mediated by the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Here we show that ErbB4 is expressed in all of our cell lines and is phosphorylated upon treatment with neuregulin. Neuregulin treatment further increases the expression of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the microglial lines tested. Given the central role of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in regulating system inflammation we analyzed the expression of several pro-inflammatory cytokines in our system. Using ELISAs for TNF-α and IL-6 we show that treatment with NRG can produce a nearly a 33% decrease in the levels of tumor necrosis factor-α secreted by activated microglia and a nearly 88% decrease in IL-6. Given these results we propose a neuroprotective role for neuregulin wherein it modulates the expression of TNF-α and thus inflammation in the CNS via the upregulation of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor expression in microglia in vitro. We suggest that the disregulation of neuregulin expression may be pivotal in neurological disorders characterized by inflammation.
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    ATP Consumption by Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Ca2+ Pumps Accounts for 40-50% of Resting Metabolic Rate in Mouse Fast and Slow Twitch Skeletal Muscle
    (Public Library of Science, 2013-07-01) Smith, Ian Curtis; Bombardier, Eric; Vigna, Chris; Tupling, A. Russell
    The main purpose of this study was to directly quantify the relative contribution of Ca2+ cycling to resting metabolic rate in mouse fast (extensor digitorum longus, EDL) and slow (soleus) twitch skeletal muscle. Resting oxygen consumption of isolated muscles (VO2, µL/g wet weight/s) measured polarographically at 30°C was ~20% higher (P<0.05) in soleus (0.326 ± 0.022) than in EDL (0.261 ± 0.020). In order to quantify the specific contribution of Ca2+ cycling to resting metabolic rate, the concentration of MgCl2 in the bath was increased to 10 mM to block Ca2+ release through the ryanodine receptor, thus eliminating a major source of Ca2+ leak from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR), and thereby indirectly inhibiting the activity of the sarco(endo) plasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPases (SERCAs). The relative (%) reduction in muscle VO2 in response to 10 mM MgCl2 was similar between soleus (48.0±3.7) and EDL (42.4±3.2). Using a different approach, we attempted to directly inhibit SERCA ATPase activity in stretched EDL and soleus muscles (1.42x optimum length) using the specific SERCA inhibitor cyclopiazonic acid (CPA, up to 160 µM), but were unsuccessful in removing the energetic cost of Ca2+ cycling in resting isolated muscles. The results of the MgCl2 experiments indicate that ATP consumption by SERCAs is responsible for 40–50% of resting metabolic rate in both mouse fast- and slow-twitch muscles at 30°C, or 12–15% of whole body resting VO2. Thus, SERCA pumps in skeletal muscle could represent an important control point for energy balance regulation and a potential target for metabolic alterations to oppose obesity.
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    Numerical modeling of interstitial fluid flow coupled wiht blood flow through a remodeled solid tumor microvascular network
    (Public Library of Science, 2013-06-26) Soltani, M.; Chen, P.
    Modeling of interstitial fluid flow involves processes such as fluid diffusion, convective transport in extracellular matrix, and extravasation from blood vessels. To date, majority of microvascular flow modeling has been done at different levels and scales mostly on simple tumor shapes with their capillaries. However, with our proposed numerical model, more complex and realistic tumor shapes and capillary networks can be studied. Both blood flow through a capillary network, which is induced by a solid tumor, and fluid flow in tumor’s surrounding tissue are formulated. First, governing equations of angiogenesis are implemented to specify the different domains for the network and interstitium. Then, governing equations for flow modeling are introduced for different domains. The conservation laws for mass and momentum (including continuity equation, Darcy’s law for tissue, and simplified Navier–Stokes equation for blood flow through capillaries) are used for simulating interstitial and intravascular flows and Starling’s law is used for closing this system of equations and coupling the intravascular and extravascular flows. This is the first study of flow modeling in solid tumors to naturalistically couple intravascular and extravascular flow through a network. This network is generated by sprouting angiogenesis and consisting of one parent vessel connected to the network while taking into account the non-continuous behavior of blood, adaptability of capillary diameter to hemodynamics and metabolic stimuli, non-Newtonian blood flow, and phase separation of blood flow in capillary bifurcation. The incorporation of the outlined components beyond the previous models provides a more realistic prediction of interstitial fluid flow pattern in solid tumors and surrounding tissues. Results predict higher interstitial pressure, almost two times, for realistic model compared to the simplified model.