4,924 research outputs found
Genetic and environmental risk factors for sexual distress and its association with female sexual dysfunction
No full textA. Burri, Q. Rahman and T. Spector (2011). Genetic and environmental risk factors for sexual distress and its association with female sexual dysfunction. Psychological Medicine, 41, pp 2435-2445. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S003329171100049
EXCITOTOXIC LESIONS OF THE PARABRACHIAL NUCLEI PREVENT CONDITIONED TASTE-AVERSIONS AND SODIUM APPETITE IN RATS
No full textElectrolytic lesions of the parabrachial nuclei (PEN) disrupt conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in the rat, but it is not known whether this effect is due to damaging axons of passage or to destruction of intrinsic neurons. We tested 10 rats with electrophysiologically guided, ibotenic acid lesions of the PEN (PBNx) to determine whether they could acquire a LiCl-induced CTA to l-alanine (0.3 M) or demonstrate a sodium appetite following furosemide treatment and overnight access to sodium deficient chow. Vehicle-treated and nonsurgical controls were included in the design. PBNx rats failed to develop a CTA, even after 3 conditioning trials. Moreover, more than 8 months later, a subset of the PBNx rats were again unable to learn a CTA using NaCl as the conditional stimulus (CS). After the furosemide treatment, the control rats drank an average of 20.3 mi of strong salt in 24 hr. The PBNx rats drank virtually no NaCl during the first 2 hr and averaged only 4.0 mi in 24 hr. In the PEN, damage to neuronal somata is more critical than interrupting fibers of passage for producing deficits in taste-guided behaviors
Blood, urine and faecal metabolite profiles in the study of adult renal disease
No full textChronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major public health burden and to date traditional biomarkers of renal function (such as serum creatinine and cystatin C) are unable to identify at-risk individuals before the disease process is well under way. To help preventive strategies and maximize the potential for effective interventions, it is important to characterise the molecular changes that take place in the development of renal damage. Metabolomics is a promising tool to identify markers of renal disease since the kidneys are involved in the handling of major biochemical classes of metabolites. These metabolite levels capture a snap-shot of the metabolic profile of the individual, allowing for the potential identification of early biomarkers, and the monitoring of real-time kidney function. In this review, we describe the current status of the identification of blood/urine/faecal metabolic biomarkers in different entities of kidney diseases including: acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, renal transplant, diabetic nephropathy and other disorders.</p
Value Pluralism and the Two Concepts of Rights
No full textPhilosophers and legal theorists still disagree about the correct analysis of 'rights', both moral and legal. The 'Will Theory' and the 'Interest Theory' - the two main views - can each account for various features of rights, but neither of them is totally satisfactory. The controversy has now been running for decades and seems irresolvable. I will contend in this paper that the discussion of 'value pluralism' in the Berlinian tradition can illuminate the debate over the concept of rights.analysis of rights, moral rights, legal rights, will theory, interest theory, value pluralism, Isaiah Berlin
Coevolutionary Dynamics in a Minimal Substrate
No full textOne of the central difficulties of coevolutionary methods arises from 'intransitive superiority' - in a two-player game, for example, the fact that A beats B, and B beats C, does not exclude the possibility that C beats A. Such cyclic superiority in a coevolutionary substrate is hypothesized to cause cycles in the dynamics of the population such that it 'chases its own tail' - traveling through some part of strategy space more than once despite apparent improvement with each step. It is often difficult to know whether an application domain contains such difficulties and to verify this hypothesis in the failure of a given coevolutionary set-up. In this paper we wish to elucidate some of the issues and concepts in an abstract domain where the dynamics of coevolution can be studied simply and directly. We define three simple 'number games' that illustrate intransitive superiority and resultant oscillatory dynamics, as well as some other relevant concepts. These include the distinction between a player's perceived performance and performance with respect to an external metric, and the significance of strategies with a multi-dimensional nature. These features alone can also cause oscillatory behavior and coevolutionary failure
Twin studies advance the understanding of gene-environment interplay in human nutrigenomics
No full textInvestigations into the genetic architecture of diet-disease relationships are particularly relevant today with the global epidemic of obesity and chronic disease. Twin studies have demonstrated that genetic makeup plays a significant role in a multitude of dietary phenotypes such as energy and macronutrient intakes, dietary patterns, and specific food group intakes. Besides estimating heritability of dietary assessment, twins provide a naturally unique, case-control experiment. Due to their shared upbringing, matched genes and sex (in the case of monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs), and age, twins provide many advantages over classic epidemiological approaches. Future genetic epidemiological studies could benefit from the twin approach particularly where defining what is 'normal' is problematic due to the high inter-individual variability underlying metabolism. Here, we discuss the use of twins to generate heritability estimates of food intake phenotypes. We then highlight the value of discordant MZ pairs to further nutrition research through discovery and validation of biomarkers of intake and health status in collaboration with cutting-edge omics technologies.</p
The Biopsychosocial model of dementia: its use in clinical practice. A pilot study
No full textBackground: Caring for people with dementia can be an emotionally challenging task and it is often linked with low job satisfaction and burnout amongst care staff. Training care home staff is a potentially valuable intervention in improving staff well-being and ensuring they are equipped to provide the best possible care for people with dementia. This review aimed to establish the impact of training on staff and to assess which interventions had the greatest influence. It also aimed to explore the influence of training intensity and potential barriers to its success.
Method: A database search of studies evaluating staff training interventions in dementia care was conducted. The search revealed 207 papers, 188 of which were subsequently excluded based on pre-specified criteria. Nineteen studies were included in the review and synthesised using a quality rating tool designed for use with a range of study designs.
Results: Overall the studies were found to be of variable quality. Sixteen studies found a significant change following training in at least one staff domain. Three studies did not find training to have a significant impact.
Conclusion: The evidence suggests that training staff can be an effective method of improving staff well-being. Programmes helping staff to manage challenging behaviour appear to be the most beneficial, although further research is required. There is no clear relationship between training intensity and outcome. The majority of studies point to the importance of addressing organisational factors as a barrier to change
Learning and Instruction in the Digital Age
No full textThe paper offers a discussion about the concept of training from a psychological point of view. Training is a process that
concerns a life long learning perspective, especially if referred to e-learning and on line activities. In this paper we
present the Workshop for Observing Children at School, an experience of e-training at the University of Macerata . We
intend to stress the crucial relevance of self assessment in training processes that involve adults’ participation. We are
going to describe the methodology used in the Workshop, according to the on line educational context. We pay particular attention to the final phase of the training process. We found the importance to arrange a moment in which participants are requested to evaluate their involvement both in terms of process and outcomes.We demonstrate the importance to plan a phase in which teachers or trainers share with participants the criterions through which they will make the assessment. In fact we found out significant differences, in terms of curricular results, between two editions of the same on line course: in the first one we did not share the criterions of assessment with participants, on the contrary in the second edition we dedicated a special moment to this activity. The results show an increase of excellent outcomes and a decrease of the sufficient results in the second edition of the course
Dietary Interventions Reduce Traditional and Novel Cardiovascular Risk Markers by Altering the Gut Microbiome and Their Metabolites
No full textAims: The current study investigates the role of diet in mediating the gut microbiome-cardiovascular association which has not yet been explored in humans. Methods and Results: Using a two-arm dietary intervention study in healthy participants (N = 70), we assessed the effects of omega-3 and fibre supplementation on gut microbiome composition and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production. We then investigated how changes in gut microbiome composition correlated with changes in traditional cardiovascular risk factors (cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure), cytokines, and novel validated markers such as GlycA and ceramides, previously linked to CVD incidence and mortality. Both interventions resulted in significant drops in blood pressure, cholesterol, proinflammatory cytokines, GlycA and ceramides (all P < 0.05). Decreases in the atherogenic low-density lipoprotein triglyceride fraction, in total serum cholesterol were correlated with increases in butyric acid-production [beta(SE) = -0.58 (0.06), P < 0.001; -0.53 (0.04), P < 0.001] and nominally associated with increases in some butyrogenic bacteria. Drops in GlycA were linked to increases in Bifidobacterium [beta(SE) = -0.32 (0.04), P = 0.02] and other SCFAs including acetic acid [beta(SE) = -0.28 (0.04), P = 0.02] and propionic acid [beta(SE) = -0.3 (0.04), P = 0.02]. Additionally, we report for the first-time reductions in specific ceramide ratios that have been shown to predict CVD mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events such as d18:1/16:0, d18:0/24:0, and d18:1/24:1 which were associated with the reduction in the abundance in Colinsella and increases in Bifidobacteriuim and Coprococcus 3 and SCFAs (all P < 0.05). Conclusion: Overall, these findings support the potential of using simple dietary interventions to alter validated biomarkers linked to cardiovascular risk via the gut microbiome composition and its metabolic functions
Some remarks on L¹ embeddings in the subelliptic setting
No full textIn this paper we establish an optimal Lorentz estimate for the Riesz potential in the L1 regime in the setting of a stratified group G: Let Q >= 2 be the homogeneous dimension of G and Ia denote the Riesz potential of order a on G. Then, for every alpha is an element of (0, Q), there exists a constant C = C(alpha, Q) > 0 such that parallel to I(alpha)f parallel to L-Q/(Q-alpha),L-1(G) <= C parallel to XI(1)f parallel to(L1(G)) (0.1)
for all f is an element of C-c(infinity) (G) such that XI(1)f is an element of L-1(G), where X denotes the horizontal gradient
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