262,213 research outputs found
Psychogenic and organic amnesia: a multidimensional assessment of clinical, neuroradiological, neuropsychological and psychopathological features
Get PDFPsychogenic amnesia is a complex disorder characterised by a wide variety of symptoms. Consequently, in a number of cases it is difficult distinguish it from organic memory impairment. The present study reports a new case of global psychogenic amnesia compared with two patients with amnesia underlain by organic brain damage. Our aim was to identify features useful for distinguishing between psychogenic and organic forms of memory impairment. The findings show the usefulness of a multidimensional evaluation of clinical, neuroradiological, neuropsychological and psychopathological aspects, to provide convergent findings useful for differentiating the two forms of memory disorder
Communicating global warming: the framing effect of climate change in shaping attitudes and behaviors
No full textReinforced by the 5th International Panel of Climate Change report, tackle with climate change is one of the
major and urgent challenges for modern and industrialized societies. In order to engage the public with
climate change, persuasive communication and effective awareness raising activities are required.
Climate communication represents an important field of study for social sciences. Particularly, the research
has focused on the ways by which the media communicate, and consequently frame, climate change.
Empirical evidences (among them: Nisbet, 2009) showed the adoption of eight recurrent frames: scientific
certainty; scientific controversy; catastrophic and dramatic consequences; political issue and matter of
struggle among groups; opportunity for social progress; problem for economic competitiveness; opportunity
for economic competitiveness; moral and ethical issue.
Drawing on the value-beliefs-norms model of environmental commitment (Stern, Dietz, Abel, Guagnano, &
Kalof, 1999; Stern, Dietz, & Kalof, 1993), and the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991; Ajzen &
Madden, 1986), the research proposal aims to investigate how media frames on climate change may affect:
environmental beliefs and institutional trust, attitudes, norms and intentions concerning ecological behaviors.
On the basis of previous framing studies on climate change, a deductive content analysis on Italian TV news
will be performed. Therefore, we’ll use a pretest-posttest experimental design in order to examine the effects
of climate change framing on the abovementioned variables.
From content analysis we’ll select eight representative video messages, one for each frame, which constitute
the experimental conditions.
To participants will be asked to complete a pre-test questionnaire, which consists of the following measures:
Environmental Beliefs, using the revised New Ecological Paradigm scale (Dunlap, 2008).
Institutional Trust, asking to participants to rate how much trust they have in political governments,
scientists, environmental organizations and media.
Attitudes, social and personal norms related to nine significant carbon-reduction behaviors (DEFRA, 2008).
Pro-environmental behavioral habits and behavioral intentions related to the same behaviors.
Socio-demographic data and political orientation.
Some week later participants will be assigned randomly to view one of the eight video message conditions,
and to a control group with no video message, asking them, after the video message, to complete the same
questionnaire administered in the pre-test phase.
Thus, it will be possible to run an analysis within and between subjects, in order to verify the presence of
significant effects for each frame, and the existence of significant differences among the effects of climate
frames on the dependent variables.
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision
processes, 50(2), 179-211.
Ajzen, I., & Madden, T. J. (1986). Prediction of goal-directed behavior: Attitudes, intentions, and perceived
behavioral control. Journal of experimental social psychology, 22(5), 453-474.
DEFRA. (2008). A Framework For Pro-Environmental Behaviours. London: DEFRA.
Dunlap, R. E. (2008). The new environmental paradigm scale: From marginality to worldwide use. Journal
of Environmental Education, 40, 3-18.
Nisbet, M. C. (2009). Communicating climate change: Why frames matter for public
engagement. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51(2), 12-23.
Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., Abel, T. D., Guagnano, G. A., & Kalof, L. (1999). A value-belief-norm theory of
support for social movements: The case of environmentalism. Human ecology review, 6(2), 81.
Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., & Kalof, L. (1993). Value orientations, gender, and environmental
concern. Environment and behavior, 25(5), 322-348
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Retrograde episodic and semantic memory impairment correlates with side of temporal lobe damage
No full textPatients with damage to the mesial and anterior portions of the temporal lobes suffer from a memory impairment involving both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. In the retrograde domain, it has been suggested that the relative severity of autobiographical and nonautobiographical memory impairment may depend on the prevalent side of the temporal damage. Here we present two patients suffering from damage to the mesial and anterior portions of the temporal lobes (hippocampal formation, parahippocampal gyrus and polar cortex) as a result of herpes encephalitis. In the first case, A.S., damage predominantly affected the right temporal lobe, whereas in the second patient, R.S., the damage was bilateral but more severe on the left side. A detailed investigation of the retrograde memory deficit demonstrated a partial double dissociation between the two patients, with A.S. almost exclusively impaired in the autobiographical domain (both episodic and semantic) and R.S. with poor performances in all domains, but much more severe in the nonautobiographical (both public events and general semantic knowledge) than in the autobiographical one. These findings reinforce the view of specialization of right and left temporal lobes in the retrieval of retrograde autobiographical and nonautobiographical memories, respectively
Multiple regulatory inputs converge on cortactin to control invadopodia biogenesis and extracellular matrix degradation.
No full textInvadopodia are proteolytically active protrusions formed by invasive tumoral cells when grown on an extracellular matrix (ECM) substratum. Although many molecular components have been defined, less is known of the formation and regulation of invadopodia. The multidomain protein cortactin, which is involved in the regulation of actin polymerisation, is one such component, but how cortactin is modulated to control the formation of invadopodia has not been elucidated. Here, a new invadopodia synchronization protocol is used to show that the cortactin N-terminal acidic and SH3 domains, involved in Arp2/3 complex and N-WASP binding and activation, respectively, are both required for invadopodia biogenesis. In addition, through a combination of RNA interference and a wide array of cortactin phosphorylation mutants, we were able to show that three convergent regulatory inputs based on the regulation of cortactin phosphorylation by Src-family kinases, Erk1/Erk2 and PAK are necessary for invadopodia formation and extracellular matrix degradation. These findings suggest that cortactin is a scaffold protein bringing together the different components necessary for the formation of the invadopodia, and that a fine balance between different phosphorylation events induces subtle changes in structure to calibrate cortactin function
Visual and semantic processing of living things and artifacts: an FMRI study
No full textWe carried out an fMRI study with a twofold purpose: to investigate the relationship between networks dedicated to semantic and visual processing and to address the issue of whether semantic memory is subserved by a unique network or by different subsystems, according to semantic category or feature type. To achieve our goals, we administered a word-picture matching task, with within-category foils, to 15 healthy subjects during scanning. Semantic distance between the target and the foil and semantic domain of the target-foil pairs were varied orthogonally. Our results suggest that an amodal, undifferentiated network for the semantic processing of living things and artifacts is located in the anterolateral aspects of the temporal lobes; in fact, activity in this substrate was driven by semantic distance, not by semantic category. By contrast, activity in ventral occipito-temporal cortex was driven by category, not by semantic distance. We interpret the latter finding as the effect exerted by systematic differences between living things and artifacts at the level of their structural representations and possibly of their lower-level visual features. Finally, we attempt to reconcile contrasting data in the neuropsychological and functional imaging literature on semantic substrate and category specificity
EGU General Assembly 2022
No full textAsbestiform minerals are potentially toxic and harmful to health and the environment and, in
recent years, several studies have been made on the presence of asbestiform minerals in the
Pollino Massif, on the border between Lucania and Calabria regions (southern Italy). Moreover,
these small fibers can be easily inhaled by humans causing serious health problems especially to
the respiratory tract. The formation of asbestiform minerals is related to metamorphism and/or
metasomatic alteration of the metamorphic rocks. The main asbestiform mineral phases which
have been found in the Pollino Massif are tremolite and, for the first time, edenite and Magnesium riebeckite. The observed asbestiform minerals found in the metamorphic rocks of the Pollino
Massif are thus: i) tremolite, which is characterized by acicular, friable, fibrous, and elongated
habitus and was found as intergrowth with fibrous antigorite and chrysotile. In the analyzed rocks,
tremolite was found in veins associated with clinopyroxene porphyroclasts; ii) edenite, which is
often associated with serpentine, diopside and calcite or occurs as 30 to 80 μm-long single crystals
with a fibrous habit. The presence of edenite in the ophiolitic sequences is quite rare and testifies
a medium to high metamorphism; iii) magnesium-riebeckite, a record of metamorphic events in
blueschist facies, composed of prismatic, acicular crystals with a fibrous habit having length ≥ 5
μm and width < 3 μm with aspect ratio > 3:1. These mineralogical phases were analyzed and
characterized using different analytical techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning
electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), electron probe micro analysis
(EPMA) and X Ray Powder diffraction analysis (XRPD). The aim of this work is to create, for the first
time, a geo-mineralogical map of the asbestiform minerals detected in these areas in order to
evaluate their spatial distribution
Protecting Animals 36: Author Witi Ihimaera
No full textIn this very special episode of Knowing Animals I am joined by beloved New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera. Witi has written many books featuring nonhuman animals. He offers us a non-colonial lens through which to think about the human/nonhuman relationship
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