79 research outputs found
Popularising midwifery and obstetrics in Martha Mears' "Pupil of Nature" (1797)
No full textBetween the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, major sociocultural changes affected the domain of medicine as an area of expertise and praxis and paved the way for new modes of constructing and disseminating knowledge which dramatically differed from the medieval, scholastic, logocentric science derived from Galen, Hippocrates, and other ancient writers (Patha and Taavitsainen 2011). The popularisation of medicine also involved linguistic changes, which naturally need to be contextualised according to such criteria as time, place, the role of speakers/hearers or writers/readers, purpose, and the prevailing scientific ideologies (or thought-styles) of the time. Within this area, midwifery and obstetrics manuals seem to occupy a significant niche which perfectly exemplifies this process; this paper proposes an analysis of Martha Mears’ Pupil of Nature, or, Candid Advice to the Fair Sex (1797) and of the (linguistic) popularisation strategies used by the author in order to render the discipline more accessible to the (new) female audience. Mears’ sensible approach to the subject of pregnancy and childbirth was aimed at creating an alternative public sphere in which women practitioners stood at the threshold between domesticity and state and served their duty both to mothers and the community (Forman Cody 1999), in spite of the prevailing ideologies of the time and the gendered disputes between them and the so-called “men-midwives” (Fife 2004). The manual will be compared to William Smellie’s Treatise on Midwifery (1752), which is generally acknowledged among the foregrounding works on obstetrics, and the study will highlight how differences in contexts, actors, readership, language (e.g. the use of Latin and/or the “vernacular” English; technical vocabulary; repetition; metaphors, etc.) can be accounted for as displays of the ongoing developments in the popularisation of science in late eighteenth-century Britain
Cognitive reserve estimated with a life experience questionnaire outperforms education in predicting performance on MoCA: Italian normative data
No full textNormative data of neuropsychological tests typically consider the effect of demographic variables like age and education on performance. However, a broad literature has shown that, after the school age, other cognitively stimulating experiences (e.g., occupational attainment and a variety of leisure-time activities) may increase and build up cognitive reserve (CR), which is positively associated with better performance in many neuropsychological tests. With these premises, we investigated the predictive capability of education and a life-experience proxy of CR on a widely used cognitive screening, i.e., the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).
Results show that models including the more comprehensive life-experience CR proxy performed better than models including Education. Based on the results of our analyses we provide normative data and cut-offs on 440 Italian individuals aged 50-90 years, by taking into account, for the first time for the Italian population, a CR index, together with demographic variables and Education, in the calculation of regression-based norms.
Accounting for life-experience CR proxies can improve the accuracy of normative data and allow a finer estimation of cognitive performance, which lead to a more tailored approach to patient assessment
Exploiting the Potential of Integrated Public Building Data: Energy Performance Assessment of the Building Stock in a Case Study in Northern Italy
No full textSmart management of urban built environment relies on the availability of data supporting sound policy making and guiding city renovation processes toward more sustainable and performant models. Nevertheless, public managers are unlikely to have comprehensive information on the existing building stock. In addition, tools providing effective insights on potential costs and benefits of retrofit strategies at city/district scale are hardly available. This article describes how data related to existing buildings may be effectively combined together into a so-called Building Information System, and discusses the advantages and shortcomings related to this process. At the same time, the implementation on a real case study in northern Italy demonstrates how the effort due to data harmonization and integration is able to foster applications to support policy makers in the management of the built environment and in the definition of urban sustainability strategies. Building data were harmonized according to the requirements of the international open standard CityGML, therefore facilitating the exchange of building information. The whole project was carried out while considering the characteristics of data sources that are available for each public body in Italy and, as a consequence, it may be replicated to other Italian municipalities.Urban Data Scienc
Clinical Manifestations and Metabolic Outcomes of Seven Adults with Silver-Russell Syndrome
No full textContext There is little information on the long-term natural history of Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS). Objective To describe the phenotypes and metabolic status in adults with SRS. Design Clinical and metabolic evaluations in adults with a molecular diagnosis of SRS. Participants Seven patients (aged 18 to 46 years; mean age, 26.9 years) were studied. Two had chromosome 7 maternal uniparental disomy, three had 11p15 loss of methylation, and two had 11p15 duplication. Setting Single tertiary university center. Main Outcome Measures Netchine-Harbison (NH) clinical score, oral glucose tolerance test, lipid profiles, bone mineral density (BMD; lumbar spine at L1 to L4 and total body), lean body mass (LBM), absolute fat mass (kg), fat mass percentage, fat mass index (FMI), and trunk/limb fat ratio were evaluated. Results The NH score declined in all but two patients during adulthood, and all patients but one displayed relative macrocephaly. Two patients were underweight, four patients had a normal body mass index, and one was obese. Two patients had glucose intolerance and hyperinsulinemia; two showed a high total cholesterol level with low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. BMD was within the normal range, whereas a high fat mass percentage, FMI, and trunk/limb fat ratio and a low LBM were found. The trunk/limb fat ratio showed an inverse relation with HDL cholesterol levels. Conclusions The diagnosis of SRS seems to be reliable in adults, although some clinical signs become less pronounced with age. Glucose, lipids, and body composition should be monitored over time
«The evolutions of the body and the robe»: da Sara Enrico a Loïe Fuller / «The evolutions of the body and the robe»: from Sara Enrico to Loïe Fuller
No full textErratum to: Bioprospecting on invasive plant species to prevent seed dispersal (Scientific Reports, (2017), 7, 1, (13799), 10.1038/s41598-017-14183-5)
No full textThe original version of this Article contained a typographical error in the spelling of the author Mario Dell’Agli, which was incorrectly given as Mario Dell’ Agli. This has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Articles
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