Tag Archives: exeter

The Tales Top Bosses Tell To Keep Ahead of The Game

Top bosses are expert storytellers who tell versions of the same four stories to keep ahead of the game, experts have found. Researchers from Exeter, Newcastle and Strathclyde universities have discovered four powerful messages are built into the often subtle and sometimes self-deprecating stories leaders tell about themselves.

The messages are about defying the odds, staying the course, succeeding through talent and giving back to society. The overall effect of this image-enhancing cocktail is to legitimise their positions as captains of industry.

Storytelling has long been recognised as a way leaders such as Winston Churchill or Steve Jobs maintained legitimacy. However, this research goes further, revealing how and why these stories are such a potent way of keeping stellar careers on track. (more…)

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Timely Ends: Telomere Length in Early Life Predicts Lifespan

New research by a team from the Universities of Glasgow and Exeter shows that a good indicator of how long individuals will live can be obtained from early in life using the length of specialised pieces of DNA called telomeres.

Telomeres occur at the ends of the chromosomes, which contain our genetic code.

They function a bit like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces by marking the chromosome ends and protecting them from various process that gradually cause the ends to be worn away. This method of DNA protection is the same for most animals and plants, including humans, and the eventual loss of the telomere cap is known to cause cells to malfunction. This study is the first in which telomere length has been measured repeatedly from early in life of an individual and then for the rest of their natural lives. The results show that telomere length in early life is strongly predictive of lifespan. (more…)

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What is The Real Meaning of Christmas?

There are thousands of stories in the Bible and a visual artist in Exeter is currently on a 30-year mission to paint the whole lot.

The University of Exeter is incorporating some of what will eventually be a series of up to 3,000 artworks by Brian J Turner into new school curriculum resources that explore how biblical stories are read and interpreted.

The Art of Narrative Theology in Religious Education project is being led by Drs Esther Reed and Rob Freathy from the Department of Theology and Religion and the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. The aim of the project is to get school pupils to investigate biblical stories and how people, whether from a Christian background or not, interpret and use them to make sense of their world and their role within it, particularly how they can live a good life. (more…)

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