1,721,075 research outputs found
Shared mechanisms underlying the impact of maternal psychophysical stress and obesity on offspring neurodevelopment
Full text linkVulnerability to mental illness might find its roots very early during development, already during fetal life. In fact, prenatal adversities can affect brain development by shaping neuronal circuits involved in stress responses, resulting in embedded biological traces that persist throughout life. In this perspective, maternal environment plays a pivotal role in driving fetal neurodevelopment, even more important than purely heritable genetic background.
Chapter 1 of this thesis introduces the concept that maternal obesity - a growing public health issue - can be considered as a stressor that, by contributing to establish a sub-optimal intrauterine environment, may derange fetal neurodevelopment. We reviewed in detail clinical and preclinical evidence showing an association between the prenatal exposure to an “obesogenic environment” and a higher risk for the occurrence of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
An ever increasing body of evidence shows that similar mental health outcomes in the offspring have been observed as a result of either maternal obesity or maternal distress during pregnancy. Thus, in Chapter 2 we propose a “funnel effect” model hypothesizing that prenatal stressors of different nature might trigger shared stress-responsive pathways affecting neuroendocrine system, immune-inflammatory processes and energy metabolism regulation, ultimately resulting in increased vulnerability to psychopathology.
Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 (original studies) investigate the shared biological mechanisms underlying the above-mentioned stressors and their effects during specific time windows across neurodevelopment in two C57Bl6/N mouse models of maternal psychophysical stress (PNS) and maternal obesity (mHFD). We focused on oxidative stress as a central player driving fetal brain programming by adverse prenatal conditions. Also for this reason in our mouse models, we administered as preventive strategy the antioxidant N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) to protect fetal neurodevelopment from stress-derived derangements.
In particular, when we focused on the short-term effects, we found a widespread pro-inflammatory profile in fetal brains exposed either to PNS or mHFD - with females being more susceptible - to be associated to placental dysfunctions (Chapter 3). Moreover, investigation of the long-term effects of PNS and mHFD specifically during adolescence showed similar effects in the offspring, characterized by reduced brain anti-oxidant defenses and impairments in hippocampal Bdnf levels, overall leading to alterations in the emotional behavior and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functionality, in a sex-dependent fashion. Maternal NAC administration, by restoring the redox balance, showed long-term protective effects on brain development (Chapter 4).
Together, our findings contribute to support our original “funnel effect” model to explain the converging effects of different stressors on offspring brain development. Above all, a pivotal role of redox signaling was highlighted as the orchestrator of a synchronized response to early adversities by the neuroendocrine and the immune system, among others. In addition, we unveil clear sex-specific differences that drive the programming effects of prenatal stressors on neurodevelopment
Azioni di rete per la qualità sociale del lavoro agricolo e la prevenzione dello sfruttamento.
No full textLa crescente emersione di casi di caporalato e di grave sfruttamento dei lavoratori agricoli in situazioni di vulnerabilità porta domande rilevanti ai confini del campo dell’agricoltura sociale: come migliorare la qualità sociale del lavoro agricolo tout court? Come agire cambiamenti di sistema volti alla prevenzione dello sfruttamento dei lavoratori? Quali strategie di rete consentono di connettere i diversi sistemi che condizionano uno sviluppo rurale equo e sostenibile?
Questo contributo si focalizza su una strategia concertata per il miglioramento delle condizioni sociali dei lavoratori in situazione di vulnerabilità, e i processi di costruzione di reti collaborative per la prevenzione dello sfruttamento, a partire dall’esperienza del progetto FARm “Modello di Filiera dell’Agricoltura Responsabile”, in Veneto, Lombardia e Trentino Alto-Adige, co-finanziato dall’Unione Europea attraverso il fondo FAMI
Rapporto ISTISAN 22/9 - Agricoltura sociale: processi, pratiche e riflessioni per l’innovazione sociosanitaria.
No full textL’ambiente naturale viene riconosciuto come un fattore di contesto importante per la prevenzione e la promozione della salute, inclusa la salute mentale. Questo rapporto propone una riflessione sulle pratiche e i processi in atto in Italia sul tema dell’agricoltura sociale. Utilizzando risorse agricole, come animali e piante, l’agricoltura sociale è in grado di soddisfare esigenze sociali specifiche, tra cui la riabilitazione, l’occupazione protetta, l’istruzione permanente e attività che contribuiscono all’inclusione sociale, allo stesso tempo, rafforzando la redditività economica e sociale delle comunità rurali. I contributi raccolti in questo rapporto sono il frutto del lavoro di una rete di ricercatori e ricercatrici italiani/e che in diverse università e istituti di ricerca svolgono attività di studio e analisi su questi temi. Vengono proposte riflessioni che coniugano analisi di pratiche territoriali con processi istituzionali più ampi che vogliono accompagnare e informare l’evoluzione dei sistemi sociosanitari, anche alla luce del Piano Nazionale di Prevenzione 2020-2025 e del recente Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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