173,252 research outputs found
Gut microbiota analyses for sustainable European local porcine breeds: a TREASURE pilot study
No full textThe study of gut microbiota and its effects on hosts has emerged as an essential component of host homeostasisand global efficiency. Besides host’s influence on gut microbiota, major quantitative and qualitative changes mayoccur in the composition of the intestinal microbiota due to the influence of diet and other environmental factors.In accordance with the TREASURE project global aim of enhancing sustainability of production systems for localpig breeds, the objective of our task was to conduct a pilot characterisation of intestinal microbiota in order to testits usefulness to characterize several local European pig populations and their production systems. This approachhas been applied to populations belonging to the following European traditional breeds: Gascon (France), Iberian(Spain), Krskopolje (Slovenia), Mangalitsa (Serbia), Moravka (Serbia) and Turopolje (Croatia). For each breed,faecal samples have been collected along different experiments performed in the TREASURE project targetingthe comprehension of a particular traditional production system (e.g. open-air farming), management practice,or the comparison of breeds. In all experiments, the metagenomics technique employed is the re-sequencing ofthe bacterial 16S in an Illumina MiSeq system. Overall, the results have shown that the gut microbiota analysis isa promising approach for the characterisation of these local breeds, by allowing a deeper understanding of theirproduction systems and potentially allowing the development of new certification approaches. Preliminary resultswill be summarized in this communication. Funded by European Union’s H2020 RIA program (Grant agreementno. 634476)
Eating in eating disorders
No full textThe aim of this paper is to bring eating back into the centre of the eating disorder discourse. The ability to interrogate and understand the central processes of appetite has increased considerably since the discovery of leptin and the ability to observe brain function with scanning methodologies. This has led to substantial progress in understanding the biological causative and maintaining factors in eating disorders, opening up the possibility of translating the latest findings into new forms of treatment. The biological mechanisms underpinning symptoms evolution and course of illness will first be described, follows by a discussion on integrating the research evidence in fear and feeding into patient care. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association
Treasure game
No full textA prize is located at an unknown point on an island. In each period, each of n players searches a subset of the as yet unsearched portion of the island. If one player alone finds the prize he wins it and the game ends. Players have a per-period discount factor and a search cost proportional to area searched. Efficient symmetric Markov perfect equilibria are characterized when search is observable. Equilibria for n ≥ 2 exhibit two types of inefficiency: a tragedy of the commons (for small islands) and free riding (for large islands). For n ≥ 3, equilibrium properties are non-monotonic: players may be better off searching larger islands, and larger islands may take less time to search. When search is unobservable and players are sufficiently impatient, multi-player search can be efficient. The model is very general: applications include R&D races, team production, and extraction of exhaustible resources.uncertainty; search; R&D
Modifying a negative interpretation bias for ambiguous social scenarios that depict the risk of rejection in women with anorexia nervosa
No full textBackground A heightened sensitivity to social rejection might contribute towards the interpersonal difficulties and symptoms that characterise Anorexia Nervosa (AN). This paper examines the effect of Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretation biases (CBM-I) training on a negative interpretation bias for ambiguous social scenarios that involve the risk of rejection and eating behaviour. Method Women with AN received a single session of CBM-I training to develop a more benign interpretational style or a control condition (which included 50:50 negative and benign resolutions). To measure participant's interpretation bias for social stimuli, a sentence completion task was used pre and post-training (a near-transfer outcome measure). A test meal was given after the training and salivary cortisol (stress) levels were measured as far-transfer outcome measures. Results CBM-I training led to a significant reduction in a negative interpretation bias in both conditions. No effect on eating behaviour or stress was found, which may be expected as the training conditions did not significantly differ in interpretation bias change. Limitations The control condition may have inadvertently reduced a negative interpretation bias as it involved listening to benign resolutions to ambiguous social scenarios for 50% of the trials. Conclusions It is possible to modify a negative interpretation bias for social stimuli. To clarify the effect of CBM-I training on AN symptomatology, repeated, more intensive, and ecologically-valid training interventions may be required. This is because any change in eating behaviour may not be immediate, particularly in a population with a low body mass index and long-illness durations
Meal support using mobile technology in Anorexia Nervosa. Contextual differences between inpatient and outpatient settings
No full textThe aim of this study was to examine the impact of a " supported eating" intervention using mobile technology in patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN). Twenty Inpatients and 18 Outpatients with AN underwent a test meal on two occasions, whilst listening to either a short video-clip ('vodcast'), or music delivered on an MP4 player. Self-report and behavioural measures were collected before and after each test meal. Differences were found between the inpatient and outpatient settings. Inpatients drank more of the test meal and had increased levels of vigilance to food after the test meal, in both conditions. When the support conditions (Vodcast vs. Music) were compared, inpatients seemed to benefit more from listening to music (reduced distress and more smoothie drunk), whereas outpatients benefitted more from using the vodcast (reduced distress, more smoothie drunk, and reduced vigilance to food). The context in which the intervention was delivered had an impact on self-report and behavioural measures collected during the test meal. This suggests that the form of meal support in AN needs to match the context. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd
The Monetary Origins of the Price Revolution' Before the Influx of Spanish-American Treasure: the South German Silver-Copper Trades, Merchant-Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470-1540
No full textThis paper seeks to provide a new and chiefly monetary explanation for the origins of the sixteenth-century era of sustained inflation (c.1520 - c.1640) commonly known as the Price Revolution'; and in particular it provides an answer to the question: not, as traditionally posed, why did the Price Revolution commence so early; but rather why did it commence so late? Beginning with the French philosopher Jean Bodin (1568) and culminating with Earl Hamilton and Keynes (1929, 1936), most economists and historians had attributed this sustained European inflation to the influx of Spanish-American treasure', chiefly silver from Peru- Bolivia and Mexico. But with advances in our knowledge of price history in the post-war era, economic historians pointed out that European inflation had commenced as early as the 1520s, some three decades before any substantial amounts of silver had been imported from the Americas. They therefore sought an alternative explanation: unfortunately, one that wrongly made population growth the prime mover' for inflation, with grave deficiencies in their economic theory. Most have confused a change in relative prices (e.g. a rise in wheat prices) with a change in the overall price level (CPI). Only one (Jack Goldstone) has sought to link population growth, and urbanization in particular, to monetary variables: i.e. to changes in payment structures and thus to the income velocity of money (or to changes in Cambridge k).gold, silver, bullion, mining, inflation, Price Revolution, public finance, Spanish America, South Germany, England, Venice, Antwerp.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
Your Trash Is Someone's Treasure The Politics of Value at a Michigan Landfill
No full textThis article discusses scavenging and dumping as alternative approaches to deriving value from rubbish at a large Michigan landfill. Both practices are attuned to the indeterminacy and power of abandoned things, but in different ways. Whereas scavenging relies on acquiring familiarity with an object by getting to know its particular qualities, landfilling and other forms of mass disposal make discards fungible and manipulable by stripping them of their former identities. By way of examining the different ways in which people become invested in the politics of value at the landfill, whether as part of expressions of gender and class or for personal enjoyment, different comportments toward materiality are revealed to have underlying social and moral implications. In particular, it is argued that different approaches to the evaluation of rubbish involve competing understandings of human and material potential
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