585 research outputs found
La prospettiva dei beneficiari. Accesso e (auto)rappresentazioni
No full textThe chapter focuses on two main issues: becoming a beneficiary and the identity dimension related to the status of a recipient of a minimum income scheme, paying particular attention to the dimension of (self-)representation, strategies and pitfalls. The first part of the chapter analyses the factors and conditions that lead to the decision to turn to public assistance and apply for income support. The second part of the chapter deals with the construction of the beneficiary identity through three thematic foci. The chapter consists of an introductory section, which serves to frame the academic debate on the issues addressed, followed by a central body of analysis organised along conceptual lines, and concluding with a discussion section, which puts the empirical findings in dialogue with the debate
La prospettiva dei beneficiari. Accesso e (auto)rappresentazioni
No full textThe chapter focuses on two main issues: becoming a beneficiary and the identity dimension related to the status of a recipient of a minimum income scheme, paying particular attention to the dimension of (self-)representation, strategies and pitfalls.
The first part of the chapter analyses the factors and conditions that lead to the decision to turn to public assistance and apply for income support. The second part of the chapter deals with the construction of the beneficiary identity through three thematic foci.
The chapter consists of an introductory section, which serves to frame the academic debate on the issues addressed, followed by a central body of analysis organised along conceptual lines, and concluding with a discussion section, which puts the empirical findings in dialogue with the debate
Economic factors affecting obesity: an application in Italy
No full textThe World Health Organization has stated that obesity is spreading around the world like a “global epidemic”. In 2004 the percentage of obese people in the Italian population was 9%, but the trend s increasing in recent years. Focusing on this country, the purpose of the paper is to analyze the socio-economic variables affecting obesity by means of a survey conducted in a consumer sample. Our analysis is based on a survey conducted in Italy, and the sample was composed of 999 consumers. We used a binary logit model and the dependent variable is body mass index (BMI), expressed in a dichotomic way (seriously overweight and obese, value 1, and normal weight, value 0). The results show that the condition of the seriously overweight and obese increases with age, especially in people over 65 of age. Also gender is correlated with the pathology: being seriously overweight and obese is far more likely for men than for women. An inverse relation was shown between obesity and education, and between obesity and the level of food knowledge. The results highlight that disadvantaged social categories are more susceptible to the problem of overweight and obesity. A policy implication of the analysis, to limit the spread of obesity, could lie in programs aimed at improving health and food awareness and focused on these minority groups.economics of obesity, BMI and consumer, logit model, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy,
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No full textDetecting pathogens and mounting immune responses upon infection is crucial for animal health. However, these responses come at a high metabolic price (McKean and Lazzaro, 2011, Kominsky et al., 2010), and avoiding pathogens before infection may be advantageous. The bacterial endotoxins lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are important immune system infection cues (Abbas et al., 2014), but it remains unknown whether animals possess sensory mechanisms to detect them prior to infection. Here we show that Drosophila melanogaster display strong aversive responses to LPS and that gustatory neurons expressing Gr66a bitter receptors mediate avoidance of LPS in feeding and egg laying assays. We found the expression of the chemosensory cation channel dTRPA1 in these cells to be necessary and sufficient for LPS avoidance. Furthermore, LPS stimulates Drosophila neurons in a TRPA1-dependent manner and activates exogenous dTRPA1 channels in human cells. Our findings demonstrate that flies detect bacterial endotoxins via a gustatory pathway through TRPA1 activation as conserved molecular mechanism.sponsorship: Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie Alessia Soldano Luis Franco Guangda Liu Natalia Mora Emre Yaksi Bassem A Hassanr Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0702.12 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0077.15 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0680.10 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0681.10 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0503.12 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0654.15 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0761.10N Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0596.12 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek G.0565.07 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Alejandro Lopez-Requena Natalia Mora Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar KU Leuven GOA/14/011 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Luis Franco Alejandro Lopez-Requena Guangda Liu Natalia Mora Emre Yaksi Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar European Commission IUAP P7/13 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Luis Franco Alejandro Lopez-Requena Guangda Liu Natalia Mora Emre Yaksi Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekensr KU Leuven OT/12/091 Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Luis Franco Alejandro Lopez-Requena Guangda Liu Natalia Mora Emre Yaksi Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talaverar KU Leuven PF-TRPLe Alessia Soldano Yeranddy A Alpizar Brett Boonen Luis Franco Alejandro Lopez-Requena Guangda Liu Natalia Mora Emre Yaksi Thomas Voets Rudi Vennekens Bassem A Hassan Karel Talavera (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0702.12, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0077.15, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0680.10, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0681.10, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0503.12, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0654.15, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0761.10N, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek|G.0596.12, KU Leuven|GOA/14/011, KU Leuven|OT/12/091, European Commission|IUAP P7/13, KU Leuven PF-TRPLe)status: Publishe
Adaptation to high-frequency vibrotactile stimulations fails to affect the clock in young children
No full textBeing able to estimate time precisely is fundamental to interact with the environment, and it is startling how our ability to track temporal intervals is prone to distortion. Unsurprisingly, researchers have studied temporal distortions extensively. Within the internal clock model framework, they have been often accounted for a change in the pacemaker's speed. However, only a few studies have tested whether these changes are eligible in children, investigating temporal distortions mainly via classical temporal bisection (in which participants should compare temporal stimuli with previously memorized durations). Since both temporal and non-specific, higher level factors mediate performance in such tasks, we decided to test time distortions in children by using a more low-level, perceptual design. Using a discrimination task and adaptation to high and low frequency vibrotactile stimulations, we compared haptic duration aftereffects in both young children (from 6 to 10 years of age) and adults. We found that sensory adaptation did not affect perceived duration in children up to 10 years of age, leading to an overall more rigid temporal representation among children who were younger. While adaptation to high frequency vibrotactile stimulations distorted perceived duration in both adults and 10 year-old children, younger participants did not experience change in perceived duration following adaptation. Conversely, adaptation to low frequency vibrotactile stimulations did not change the tested groups' perceived duration. Given the lack of temporal distortions to high frequency stimulations after adaptation in younger children, our results advocate for a different clock functioning. This suggests the internal clock functioning changes during development
One-class support vector machines identify the language and default mode regions as common patterns of structural alterations in young children with autism spectrum disorders
No full textThe identification of reliable brain endophenotypes of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been hampered to date by the heterogeneity in the neuroanatomical abnormalities detected in this condition. To handle the complexity of neuroimaging data and to convert brain images in informative biomarkers of pathology, multivariate analysis techniques based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) have been widely used in several disease conditions. They are usually trained to distinguish patients from healthy control subjects by making a binary classification. Here, we propose the use of the One-Class Classification (OCC) or Data Description method that, in contrast to two-class classification, is based on a description of one class of objects only. This approach, by defining a multivariate normative rule on one class of subjects, allows recognizing examples from a different category as outliers. We applied the OCC to 314 regional features extracted from brain structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of young children with ASD (21 males and 20 females) and control subjects (20 males and 20 females), matched on age [range: 22-72 months of age; mean = 49 months] and non-verbal intelligence quotient (NVIQ) [range: 31-123; mean = 73]. We demonstrated that a common pattern of features characterize the ASD population. The OCC SVM trained on the group of ASD subjects showed the following performances in the ASD vs. controls separation: the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.74 for the male and 0.68 for the female population, respectively. Notably, the ASD vs. controls discrimination results were maximized when evaluated on the subsamples of subjects with NVIQ = 70, leading to AUC = 0.81 for the male and AUC = 0.72 for the female populations, respectively. Language regions and regions from the default mode network-posterior cingulate cortex, pars opercularis and pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, and transverse temporal gyrus-contributed most to distinguishing individuals with ASD from controls, arguing for the crucial role of these areas in the ASD pathophysiology. The observed brain patterns associate preschoolers with ASD independently of their age, gender and NVIQ and therefore they are expected to constitute part of the ASD brain endophenotype
Tuning Gaps and Schottky Contacts of Graphene/Phosphorene Heterostructures by Vertical Electric Field and Strain
No full textWe present a comprehensive study of the structural and electronic properties of a graphene/
phosphorene (G/P) heterostructure in the framework of density functional theory, including van der
Waals interaction in the exchange–correlation functional. While the G(4 1)/P(3 1) superlattice
usually used in the literature is subject to a strain as high as about 7%, the in-plane strain could
be drastically reduced to under 1% in the G(4 13)/P(3 12) heterostructure investigated here.
Adapting the lattice constants of the rectangular lattices, the equilibrium configuration in the xy
plane of phosphorene relative to the graphene layer is optimized. This results in an equilibrium
interlayer distance of 3.5 Å and a binding energy per carbon atom of 37 meV, confirming the presence
of weak van der Waals interaction between the graphene and the phosphorene layers. The electronic
properties of the heterostructure are evaluated under different values of interlayer distance, strain
and applied vertical electric field. We demonstrate that G/P heterostructures form an n-type Schottky
contact, which can be transformed into p-type under external perturbations. These findings, together
with the possibility to control the gaps and barrier heights, suggest that G/P heterostructures are
promising for novel applications in electronics and may open a new avenue for the realization of
innovative optoelectronic devices
Cellular neurothekeoma in a girl: could oestrogens favour the development and growth of this rare tumour?
No full textinfluenza degli estrogeni sullo sviluppo di neoplasie cutane
Letter: Total body photography versus digital dermoscopic follow-up in the diagnosis of pigmented lesions
No full textTotal body photography on melanocytic lesions is an helpful tool when used in selected patients or in combination with digital dermoscopy and real-time dermoscopic evaluation
An audio-visual motor training improves audio spatial localization skills in individuals with scotomas due to retinal degenerative diseases
No full textSeveral studies have shown that impairments in a sensory modality can induce perceptual deficits in tasks involving the remaining senses. For example, people with retinal degenerative diseases like Macular Degeneration (MD) and with central scotoma show biased auditory localization abilities towards the visual field's scotoma area. This result indicates an auditory spatial reorganization of cross-modal processing in people with scotoma when the visual information is impaired. Recent works showed that multisensory training could be beneficial to improve spatial perception. In line with this idea, here we hypothesize that audio-visual and motor training could improve people's spatial skills with retinal degenerative diseases. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis by testing two groups of scotoma patients in an auditory and visual localization task before and after a training or rest performance. The training group was tested before and after multisensory training, while the control group performed the two tasks twice after 10 min of break. The training was done with a portable device positioned on the finger, providing spatially and temporally congruent audio and visual feedback during arm movement. Our findings show improved audio and visual localization for the training group and not for the control group. These results suggest that integrating multiple spatial sensory cues can improve the spatial perception of scotoma patients. This finding ignites further research and applications for people with central scotoma for whom rehabilitation is classically focused on training visual modality only
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