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Dupuytrens disease: Achieving a balance between no treatment, treatment and over-treatment
No full textstatus: Accepte
Diagrammatic Innovations in Louvain Logic Notebooks (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries)
No full textstatus: Accepte
Numerical modeling and hydrodynamic characteristics analysis of a contra-rotating rim-driven thruster
No full textstatus: Publishe
Stop being so rude! How customer reprimands attenuate the impact of customer mistreatment
No full textsponsorship: Research Foundation (Flanders)|G0C5617Nstatus: Published onlin
No one wants to see curvy women”. The Absence of Diverse Models in Magazine Advertisements: A 10-Year Perspective
No full textWith the body positivity movement being popularized through the internet (e.g., social media, websites) around 2010, the question remains whether fashion and beauty advertisements have embraced diverse body shapes and traits or continue to promote idealized appearances throughout 2010-2020. With this quantitative content analysis, we examine female models in popular Belgian high-end fashion magazines 'Elle' and 'Marie Claire'. Our study analyzed 1310 female models in 1111 fashion and beauty advertisements from Belgian magazines 'Elle' and 'Marie Claire' between 2010 and 2020. Results revealed that less than 0.5 % of models were plus-size, and only 8.08 % had an average body size. Average and plus-size models were not sexualized more than slim models, though this might be due to their low prevalence. While diverse appearance traits were present, they often followed societal 'micro-trends' focused on facial attractiveness (e.g., having big brows), neglecting broader diversity traits such as cellulite. These findings highlight the limited representation of diverse body sizes and appearance traits in luxury fashion magazines, urgently calling for greater inclusivity in the fashion industry.sponsorship: This work was supported by KU Leuven under Grant PDMT2/23/009. (KU Leuven|PDMT2/23/009)status: Published onlin
Poor Lawyering in England & Wales and the Appellate System: A Remedy or a Placebo?
No full textstatus: Publishe
Levensmoeheid, voltooid leven …? Conceptualisering en meting van een complex fenomeen
No full textThe phenomenon of 'tiredness of life' (ToL) is arising in debates regarding euthanasia and assisted suicide for older adults. Research on this experience is scarce and often concerned with the perspectives of healthcare professionals or the general population instead of first-person experiences. Moreover, the conceptualization of this phenomenon remains vague and inconsistent, which is reflected in the absence of validated measures. The current dissertation therefore sought to clarify the conceptualization of ToL and take a first step towards developing a scale to assess its experience.
After outlining the current state of ToL research in the General Introduction, Chapter 1 offers an overview of the terms, definitions, and perspectives on the phenomenon using a systematic literature review. The terms 'ToL' and 'weariness of life' were frequently encountered. Various differences were found between studies that were associated with debates on euthanasia and studies that investigated ToL as a suicidal expression. Chapter 2 builds on the findings of the first chapter and presents an integrative definition of ToL, highlighting the role of boredom with life, aversion towards life, and feelings of meaninglessness as well as fatigue in its experience. Chapter 3 provides an initial evaluation of the ToL conceptualization in terms of its correspondence with lay ideas and personal experiences regarding this phenomenon, which were examined by a written response design. This chapter also addresses the potential role of context in understanding ToL, by including both Belgian and American older adults. ToL conceptualization and lay perspectives were mostly aligned, though heterogeneity in the prevalence of the components was observed and additional components were identified. Findings were similar for the two countries. Chapter 4 focuses on the development of a scale to measure ToL, again grounded in the conceptualization proposed in the second chapter. Item development, expert review, and cognitive interviewing were performed, followed by a psychometric evaluation in emerging and older adults. The scale correlates strongly with depressive symptoms, suicidal expressions, physical quality of life, and satisfaction with life. The General Discussion concludes this dissertation by outlining limitations and paths for future research as well as some reflections on the process of conceptualization itself.status: Publishe
Onderzoek naar overlevingsmechanismen tegen geneesmiddelen in Mycobacterium abscessus
No full textBacterial infections remain a formidable global health challenge, placing substantial burden on healthcare systems and economies. The emergence of strains capable of circumventing antibiotic treatments exacerbates this threat. While tuberculosis persists as a major concern in developing countries, Mycobacterium abscessus is increasingly recognized for its recalcitrance and severe clinical outcomes, particularly in immunocompromised individuals. Despite its growing clinical significance, the molecular basis underlying the exceptional resilience of M. abscessus remains poorly understood, underscoring the need for further mechanistic insights that can inform the development of more effective therapeutic strategies.
This dissertation addresses these gaps by employing an experimental evolution approach to examine how M. abscessus adapts and develops resistance under antibiotic pressure. As this methodology was previously uncharted for M. abscessus, initial efforts focused on establishing robust experimental conditions, such as optimizing inoculum size, growth phase, media selection, and antibiotic dosing, to balance adequate selective pressure with sufficient bacterial survival. Under high-dose amikacin-rifabutin combination exposure, rapid selection of mutations conferring high-level resistance occurred by the third to fourth treatment cycle, resulting in dual resistance to both antibiotics. Although these dominant mutations initially obscured the presence of secondary adaptive pathways, later experiments uncovered additional stress-response mutations that trigger population-wide transcriptional reprogramming, thereby promoting antibiotic survival. This work establishes a framework for using experimental evolution to explore not only high-level resistance but also stress-adaptation pathways in M. abscessus. A key finding was the identification of a single guanine deletion in the upstream regulatory region of the WhiB7 transcriptional regulator, which mediates inducible resistance to multiple antibiotic classes. This mutation leads to constitutive WhiB7 activation and confers multidrug resistance. Molecular analyses provided insights into a likely transcriptional attenuation mechanism governing WhiB7 activation in M. abscessus. Additionally, experiments with high-dose moxifloxacin selected for mutations that disrupted the σH-inhibitory protein RshA. Although these variants did not markedly affect overall drug susceptibility, they significantly enhanced bacterial survival under antibiotic stress. Subsequent barcoded gene-replacement, complementation, and knockout studies confirmed that these stress-response pathways collectively enable M. abscessus to resist treatment by inducing intrinsic resistance and promoting antibiotic tolerance. A response that further complicates treatment regimens that rely on aminoglycosides, macrolides, and fluoroquinolones.
To evaluate the clinical relevance, a genomic library of 222 M. abscessus clinical isolate strains, encompassing all subspecies, was analyzed. Multiple polymorphisms were found within the WhiB7 regulatory region, although their effect on antibiotic susceptibility remains to be determined. While disruptive RshA mutations were absent in this curated set, certain σH polymorphisms correlated with increased drug sensitivity, demonstrating the importance of this pathway. Moreover, subspecies-specific synonymous variants in both the WhiB7 upstream region and the gene encoding RshA may facilitate rapid molecular typing and simultaneous profiling of relevant stress responses. In conclusion, this dissertation demonstrates that M. abscessus readily acquires multidrug resistance and antibiotic tolerance through the activation of intrinsic stress responses. Given the limited therapeutic arsenal currently available, there is an urgent need for novel drug discovery efforts. By pinpointing critical vulnerabilities in these stress responses, the findings presented here offer new avenues for the development of targeted strategies to circumvent or exploit these mechanisms, ultimately improving clinical outcomes for M. abscessus infections.status: Publishe
Deservingness and solidarity: choosing who should get help among people who beg
No full textA strand of the social policy literature investigates who the general public deems deserving of benefits or other types of assistance from public money. This is based on a deservingness heuristic – the judgmental shortcuts people use to make choices. We apply this to direct solidarity towards people who beg through a discrete choice experiment (DCE), the first study to apply the DCE approach to assess direct solidarity choices towards people in extreme poverty. This method allows for revealing preferences that are otherwise difficult to estimate reliably in non-experimental designs of questionnaire research. We assess passers-by’s criteria when deciding whether to give alms to beggars. We use pairs of digital illustrations of individual beggars depicting a combination of four attributes (gender, ethnicity, disability, and the presence of an infant). Respondents in the public space of Brussels are asked to choose between giving alms to one of the beggars and opting out, which means they do not give at all. Approximately 80% of respondents gain positive marginal utility from giving alms to disabled beggars and beggars with children. Most striking, however, is the ethnic dislike: some 70% of respondents derive a negative utility from giving alms to Roma beggars.status: Published onlin