124,024 research outputs found
The European Policy for Food Quality and the Fischlers Reform
No full textFischlers Reform of the Cap has introduced economic support to reinforce the range of instruments aimed at promoting food quality. Before the Reform, European Union market intervention for food quality was confined to the regulatory ground. The paper discusses the economic justifications for financial aid in the case of quality improvement and in the case of information circulation and provision of assurance to consumers. The possibility to add new Quality Schemes at the existing ones is criticized because of the information overcrowding. Furthermore, it is argued that a race to the bottom mechanism could be enforced as a result of the introduction of the possibility to settle Quality Schemes on a national basis. The paper also shows that the unsatisfactory functioning of existing Quality Schemes could be better faced by simplification of the whole quality certification system; by a communication effort at a general level and not only for single Quality Schemes; and by a better coordination of the different strategies of the different stakeholders in the food chains.Quality Schemes, Cap Reform, Information, Reputation, Economic Support, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
Response to: The association between hypertension and rotator cuff disease: a spurious result?
No full textResponse to: The association between hypertension and rotator cuff disease: a spurious result?
Dear editor,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to answer to letter to the Editor JSES-D-12-00464. As mentioned by the author of this letter, it is well known that the incidence of rotator cuff tears increases with age and that a large proportion of tears is completely asymptomatic4,5,6. The population prevalence of full thickness rotator cuff tears is 22.2% in females of age 60-83 years and 47% of these tears are completely asymptomatic3. The author affirms that the failure to consider the presence of asymptomatic cuff tears in the control group could fully account for the authors observation of an association between hypertension and rotator cuff tears. If we hypothetically assume that we had a plausible prevalence in the control group of asymptomatic cuff tears of 22.2%,3 it will not not affect the result that in the cuff tear patient group the prevalence of hypertension is significantly higher, but, on the contrary, it makes it more evident.
In our article, we selected 201 patients negative for shoulder pathologies because shoulder painless2 and because negative to clinical tests for cuff tears. Of course, as the author state, there is no radiological assessment of their rotator cuff.2 On the other side, a patient affected by a cuff tear (symptomatic or asymptomatic) usually does not have normal shoulder external or internal rotation strength or does have a negative external rotation lag sign.1 In addition, the main result of our study is that there is an association between size of cuff tear and hypertension and, thus, this result is not affected by eventual bias of selection of the control group, being this result calculated only in the study group (patients who underwent arthroscopic cuff repair).
Best personal regards,
Prof. Stefano Gumina (MD, PhD)
References
1)Castoldi F, Blonna D, Hertel R. External rotation lag sign revisited: Accuracy for
diagnosis of full thickness supraspinatus tear. J Shoulder Elbow Surg 2009; 18: 529-534.
2)Gumina S, Arceri V, Carbone S, Albino P, Passaretti D, Campagna V, Fagnani C, Postacchini F. The association between arterial hypertension and rotator cuff tear: the influence on rotator cuff tear sizes. J Shoulder Elbow Surg. 2012 Jun 27. doi: 10.1016/j.jse.2012.05.023
3) Oag HCL, Daines MD, Nichols AS, Arden NK, Carr AJ. The association between rotator cuff tears, shoulder pain and activities of daily living: Normal population data. Presented at BESS (British Shoulder and Elbow Society) 2012 and awaiting publication in Proceedings of BESS.
4) Yamaguchi K, Ditsios K, Middleton WD, Hildebolt CF, Galatz LM, Teefey SA. The demographic and morphological features of rotator cuff disease. A comparison of asymptomatic and symptomatic shoulders. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2006; 88: 1699-1704. doi:10.2106/JBJS.E.00835
5) Yamamoto A, Takagishi K, Kobayashi T, Shitara H, Osawa T. Factors involved in the presence of symptoms associated with rotator cuff tears: a comparison of asymptomatic and symptomatic rotator cuff tears in the general population. J Shoulder Elbow Surg 2011; 20:1133-1137. doi:10.1016/j.jse.2011.01.011
6) Yamamoto A, Takagishi K, Osawa T, Yanagawa T, Nakajima D, Shitara H, Kobayashi T. Prevalence and risk factors of a rotator cuff tear in the general population. J Shoulder Elbow Surg 2010; 19: 116-20. doi:10.1016/j.jse.2009.04.00
Leiomyoma pseudocapsule after pre-surgical treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists: relationship between clinical features and immunohistochemical changes.
No full textOBJECTIVE:
To evaluate if pre-operative GnRH-a modify uterine leiomyoma pseudocapsule and the possible clinical effects of these changes.
STUDY DESIGN:
The study was performed at the University Federico II of Naples on 33 premenopausal patients submitted to laparotomic myomectomy after treatment with triptorelin depot. 29 untreated patients formed the control group. The operating time, the intraoperative bleeding and the prompt identification of the cleavage plan between myoma and myometrium were evaluated. The pseudocapsule features and the immunoexpression of PCNA and CD34 in this area were studied.
RESULTS:
Treated patients showed lower blood loss and not clearly identifiable cleavage plan, but without any significant increase in the operating time. Treated lesions showed less evident border between myoma and myometrium and lower PCNA and CD34 pseudocapsule immunoexpression than untreated ones.
CONCLUSION:
We propose the changes of leiomyoma pseudocapsule as partial explanations of the reported clinical and surgical findings after pre-operative GnRH-a
Adsorption of 2-vinyl thiophene on Si (100)2 × 1: A van der Waals corrected DFT study
No full textOligo- and polythiophenes on surfaces play a fundamental role in building molecular circuits
and organic-based electronics and may be assembled via interaction of the monomer units with
the surface. In this framework, the nature of interaction of 2-vinyl thiophene (2VTP), a conjugated
heteroaromatic monomer unit, with the Si(100) surface was studied by means of density
functional theory (DFT). In particular, structural optimizations were performed comparing the
effects of the inclusion of van der Waals (VdW) forces. It came out that the adsorption through
the double bond is energetically favored, if VdW forces are included, whereas the adsorption
through both aromatic ring and double bond simultaneously is more stable, if they are excluded.
Physisorbed states were singled out and the barriers between two of them and the corresponding
chemisorbed states were calculated along with the imaginary frequencies of the transition states.
Also the transition energies have different values if the VdW forces are included
Author headings for the official publications of the State of Kansas
No full textIncludes bibliographical references (page x).This list of author headings covers all official agencies as found in the laws of the territory and the laws of the state of Kansas from May 30, 1854 through July 1955; also agencies created by Executive Order, and administrative divisions, or boards, created within a department of the state. Agencies included are:
1. All departments, bureaus, divisions, commissions, courts, legislative bodies and special committees created by the laws or joint resolutions of the territory or state of Kansas, or by Executive Order*
2. Subdivisions of the respective departments, bureaus, commissions and committees even though not expressly created by acts of the legislature, but which are included in the official reports of the agencies*
3. Legislative bodies and their committees, if created by law, or if their reports were published.
4. Societies supported wholly, or in part, by the state.
5. All state and territorial institutions (including educational, charitable, correctional and penal)
Reply to: “The association between hypertension and rotator cuff disease: a spurious result?”
No full textThank you for giving us the opportunity to answer the Letter to the Editor. As mentioned by the author of this letter, it is well known that the incidence of rotator cuff tears increases with age and that a large proportion of tears are completely asymptomatic.4, 5 and 6 The population prevalence of full-thickness rotator cuff tears is 22.2% in women aged 60 to 83 years, and 47% of these tears are asymptomatic.4
The author affirms that the failure to consider the presence of asymptomatic cuff tears in the control group could fully account for the author's observation of an association between hypertension and rotator cuff tears. If we hypothetically assume that we had a plausible 22.2% prevalence of asymptomatic cuff tears in the control group,3 it would not affect the result that the prevalence of hypertension is significantly higher in the cuff tear patient group, but, on the contrary, it makes it more evident.
In our article, we selected 201 patients negative for shoulder pathologies because the shoulder was painless2 and because of negative results to clinical tests for cuff tears. Of course, as the author states, there is no radiologic assessment of their rotator cuff.2 However, a patient affected by a cuff tear (symptomatic or asymptomatic) usually does not have normal shoulder external or internal rotation strength or does have a negative external rotation lag sign.1 In addition, the main result of our study is that there is an association between size of cuff tear and hypertension, and thus, this result is not affected by eventual bias of selection of the control group, being this result was calculated only in the study group of patients who underwent arthroscopic cuff repair
Book Review: Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination by Doug Meyer
No full textViolence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community—white, middle class men—and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence—racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender.
Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence—and perceive that violence quite differently—based on their race, class, and gender. His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination—including racism and sexism—shape LGBT people’s experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren’t sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects
A multiple time step scheme for multiresolved models of Macromolecules
No full textIn hybrid particle models where coarse-grained beads and atoms are used simultaneously, two clearly separate time scales are mixed. If such models are used in molecular dynamics simulations, a multiple time step (MTS) scheme can therefore be used. In this manuscript, we propose a simple MTS algorithm which approximates for a specific number of integration steps the slow coarse-grained bead-bead interactions with a Taylor series approximation while the atom-atom ones are integrated every time step. The procedure is applied to a previously developed hybrid model of a melt of atactic polystyrene (di Pasquale, Marchisio, and Carbone, J. Chem. Phys. 2012, 137, 164111). The results show that structure, local dynamics, and free diffusion of the model are not altered by the application of the integration scheme which can confidently be used to simulate multiresolved models of polymer melts. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
Presenza ed eredità di Malebranche da Parigi a Napoli. Una breve introduzione
No full textPresence and Legacy of Malebranche from Paris to Naples. A Brief Introduction. This introduction focuses on Malebranchean major issues and studies in Italy and abroad and explains the reasons at the basis if this collective work. In his numerous writings Malebranche developed an original philosophical system that he enriched in time by investigating various philosophical and theological themes (causality, mind-body relationship, the question of original sin) and by proposing new interpretive grids. Malebranche’s legacy deserves to be investigated further by means of a comparison with other authors of his time, by whom he was sometimes dragged into virulent polemics
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