1,721,105 research outputs found
Linking the Endoplasmic Reticulum to Parkinson’s Disease and Alpha-Synucleinopathy
Full text linkAccumulation of misfolded proteins is a central paradigm in neurodegeneration. Because of the key role of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in regulating protein homeostasis, in the last decade multiple reports implicated this organelle in the progression of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and other neurodegenerative illnesses. In PD, dopaminergic neuron loss or more broadly neurodegeneration has been improved by overexpression of genes involved in the ER stress response. In addition, toxic alpha-synuclein (αS), the main constituent of proteinaceous aggregates found in tissue samples of PD patients, has been shown to cause ER stress by altering intracellular protein traffic, synaptic vesicles transport, and Ca2+ homeostasis. In this review, we will be summarizing evidence correlating impaired ER functionality to PD pathogenesis, focusing our attention on how toxic, aggregated αS can promote ER stress and cell death
Il diritto di rinascere nel tempo della pena: lo spazio della formazione
No full textIl presente contributo a due voci prova a delineare il ruolo strategico della formazione nel processo di rinnovamento del dispositivo carcerario, a cui si chiede sempre più di trasformarsi in un’istituzione sociale integrata nel territorio. In questa prospettiva si analizza il concetto di formazione, richiamando alcune buone pratiche sulla scorta delle riflessioni maturate nei recenti dibattiti europei, non solo come risorsa per il cambiamento tanto per gli adulti quanto per i minori autori di reato, ma anche per una revisione del concetto stesso di ‘pena’ e per il consolidamento di un modello di giustizia riparativa.This article, written in two voices, try to outline the strategic role of training in the renovation process of the prison device, to which the civil society increasingly asks to transform into an integrated institution of the territory. In this perspective it is analyzed the concept of training and education - calling to mind some good practices on the basis of reflections made in recent European debates - not only as a resource for change, as much for the offenders adults as for juvenile, but also for a revision of the same concept of 'penalty' and for the consolidation of a restorative justice model
L'agire professionale in carcere: donne per l'empowerment delle donne
No full textToday, on all of the national territory, there are only four female institutions for adult women and only one for minors: therefore the majority of women of all ages is forced to live detention in subsections of prisons “conceived” for men, demonstrating the longstanding idea which interpreted female criminality along the lines of “vulnerability”, when not of inferiority. Starting from the workers’ professional actions and from projects of excellence, considering the gender view as a perspective to adopt so as to respect differences, but also to think about models of atonement of the sentence, this paper thus proposes paradigms and styles of intervention to subtract women from a subordinate plan. What emerges from this analysis is the need for a renovation of the cultures and relations among those who live prison on a daily basis and the necessity to arrange educational settings which are able to succumb more on the resources than on the shortages, making the derisory number of females not an alibi for carelessness, but an occasion to experiment new approaches and methodologies
Exogenous administration of microsomes-associated alpha-synuclein aggregates to primary neurons as a powerful cell model of fibrils formation
Full text linkFor years, the inability of replicating formation of insoluble alpha-synuclein (αS) inclusions in cell cultures has been a great limitation in the study of αS aggregation in Parkinson's Disease (PD). Recently, the development of new animal models through the exogenous inoculation of brain extracts from diseased αS transgenic mice or PD patients has given new hopes to the possibility of creating more adequate cell models of αS aggregation. Unfortunately, when it comes to cells in cultures, administration of raw brain extracts has not proven as successful as in mice and the source of choice of exogenous aggregates is still in vitro preformed αS fibrils. We have developed a method to induce the formation of intracellular αS inclusions in primary neurons through the exogenous administration of native microsomes-associated αS aggregates, a highly toxic αS species isolated from diseased areas of transgenic mice. This fraction of αS aggregates that is associated with the microsomes vesicles, is efficiently internalized and induces the formation of intracellular inclusions positive for aggregated and phosphorylated αS. Compared to in vitro-preformed fibrils which are made from recombinant αS, our method is faster and guarantees that the pathogenic seeding is made with authentic αS aggregates extracted from diseased animal models of PD, mimicking more closely the type of inclusions obtained in vivo. As a result, availability of tissues rich in αS inclusions is mandatory. We believe that this method will provide a versatile cell-based model to study the microscopic aspects of αS aggregation and the related cellular pathophysiology in vivo and will be a starting point for the creation of more accurate and sophisticated cell paradigm of PD
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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