1,720,993 research outputs found
Joint design of organization processes and information system: a methodology based on action theory
No full textRANKL/RANK, OPG and OPT in a group of patients affected by chronic arthritis. Preliminary report
No full textRecently, receptor activator of nuclear factor-kB ligand (RANKL), its receptor RANK, and the decoy receptor osteoprotegerin (OPG), have been identified as paracrine mediator of bone functions. The balance of RANKL/RANK and OPG is critical for osteoclastogenesis modulation and physiological bone remodeling. Osteopontin (OPN) is an extracellular glycosylate bone phosphoprotein and acts both as chemokine and cytochine. It is produced by osteoclast, macrophages, T cells, hematopoietic cells and vascular smooth muscle cells. It is present particularly at high concentration in the lamina limitans and cement line, suggesting its role in the initiation and termination of the bone turnover. Chronic arthritis are a group of rheumatic patologies characterized by periodical continuous or desultory use of corticosteroides. The main aims of this study are to valuate OPG, RANKL and OPN serum concentrations in patients affected by chronic arthritis and to compare the above results with those ones obtained by young healthy population. OPG, RANKL and OPN serum concentration has been measured by ELISA method both in 40 patients affected by chronic arthritis then in young healthy population of 81 subjects. The differences between the two considered groups have been analyzed using unpaired T-Student. The difference between the two groups is significant for considered variables: OPG: t=-6,54, p<0,001; RANKL: t=-2,71, p=0,008; OPN: t=2,55, p=0,01. These results suggest that RANKL/RANK system, OPG and OPN have important role in patients with chronic arthritis
Democratization Against Democracy: How EU Foreign Policy Fails the Middle East
No full textThis book explains why the EU is not a ‘normative actor’ in the Southern Mediterranean, and how and why EU democracy promotion fails. Drawing on a combination of discourse analysis of EU policy documents and evidence from opinion polls showing ‘what the people want’, the book shows EU policy fails because the EU promotes a conception of democracy which people do not share. Likewise, the EU’s strategies for economic development are misconceived because they do not reflect the people’s preferences for greater social justice and reducing inequalities. This double failure highlights a paradox of EU democracy promotion: while nominally emancipatory, it de facto undermines the very transitions to democracy and inclusive development it aims to pursue
MENA Populations Perceptions of Key Challenges, International context and the Role of the European Union
No full textConclusions: Learning from Listening? Why the EU Failed to Learn from the Arab Uprisings and Why that Matters
No full textThis book has above all shown why the EU is not a ‘normative actor’ in the Middle East and how and why EU democracy promotion fails. These efforts fail because the Union promotes the wrong kind of democracy and the wrong kind of strategies for economic growth—wrong both in the sense that these approaches do not work and in the sense that they are not what people want. This double failure highlights a paradox of EU democracy promotion: while nominally an emancipatory endeavour, de facto it undermines those very emancipatory transitions to democracy and to inclusive development which it claims to pursue. In detailing these failures, the book compares conceptions of gender, democracy and human rights. The ‘gap’ between EU images and populations’ self-conceptions explains negative perceptions of the EU—undermining its role as a ‘normative power’—and how the EU’s own narratives ‘other’ Southern Mediterranean Countries’ populations
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
Constructing the EU as a Policy Entrepreneur: The Roots of European Identity
No full textThis chapter explores the evolution of the EU’s self-image as a normative entrepreneur—what it sees as good and successful in its own creation—which should be exported as the model of society to which others should aspire. This provides the context for examining the extent to which the EU’s foreign policy in Southern Mediterranean Countries is, as the EU claims, designed to support the export of this successful model. Our analysis shows that the EU’s contemporary narrative about achieving peace and prosperity in post–World War II Europe leans heavily on values and on development driven by market liberalisation. By contrast, however, its history has been driven by regional economic integration and Keynesian macroeconomics. Analogously, while the EU’s self-image has remained social democratic and much is made of the ‘European Social Model’, in practice this has been steadily eroded—albeit to varying degrees—for at least three decades
- …
