showing 36 of ~574560 from 574555 documents
Muscle Strength and Physical Performance Are Associated with Reaction Time Performance in Older People
2021
Background: Functional mobility and muscle strength are well known risk factors for sarcopenia. Furthermore, possible associations have been suggested between predisposing factors of sarcopenia and reaction time among the elderly. This study aims to analyze possible associations of functional mobility and muscle strength and reaction times in a population of people aged >
Involvement of Thyroid Hormones in Brain Development and Cancer
2021
Simple Summary Development and function of the mammalian brain clearly require precise regulation of gene expression at both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level. Thyroid hormones have been recognized to play a fundamental role in these processes, by acting at multiple levels and in different brain cell types, through direct effects on transcription, mediated by nuclear receptors, and also by triggering transduction pathways at the plasma membrane. At the same time, due to their effects on proliferation, differentiation, and cell metabolism, thyroid hormones may have a critical role in different kinds of cancer, including brain cancer. Abstract The development and maturation o…
Expansive Voronoi Tree: A Motion Planner for Assembly Sequence Planning
2021
One major challenge in Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) for complex real-world CAD-scenarios is to find an appropriate disassembly path for each assembled part. Complex real-world scenes are characterized by a large installation space. There each part has many different possible disassembly paths that differ in length and clearance. However, due to tight packing in the installation space, these paths can contain narrow passages. Therefore a motion planner is needed that is able to globally search for a reasonable path and to locally overcome narrow passages. Moreover, since motion planning requests are executed in the ASP context over and over again for many parts, both for those that can b…
Effects of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation on the muscle function of children with Congenital Heart Disease : a prospective cohort study
2021
Critical medical and surgical advances have led to a shift in the care and management of children with congenital heart disease (CHD). These patients present with muscle deconditioning, which negatively influences their response to exercise, functional capacities, and quality of life. This study evaluates the influence of a cardiopulmonary rehabilitation program (CPRP) on the function of peripheral musculature of children with CHD. A single-center prospective cohort study was designed. Fifteen CHD subjects, between 12 and 16 years of age, with reduced aerobic capacity on a cardiopulmonary exercise test, were included in a three-month, 24-session CPRP. Measurements of the subjects’ handgrip …
Dissociable Functional Brain Networks Associated With Apathy in Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease
2021
Few studies have investigated differences in functional connectivity (FC) between patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), especially in relation to apathy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare apathy-related FC changes among patients with SIVD, AD, and cognitively normal subjects. The SIVD group had the highest level of apathy as measured using the Apathy Evaluation Scale-clinician version (AES). Dementia staging, volume of white matter hyperintensities (WMH), and the Beck Depression Inventory were the most significant clinical predictors for apathy. Group-wise comparisons revealed that the SIVD patients had the worst level of “Ini…
GIBELLINA: VANGUARD OF A COSMOPOLITAN CITY
2021
Gibellina is a city formed by orogenesis. It was reborn after a dramatic earthquake and shook the sediment off urban theory, becoming a city open to the world and to the worlds of contemporary culture; of architecture, art, theatre. To understand its revolutionary force, we must immerse ourselves in the context of 1968, when an earthquake hit the Belice Valley with a violence capable of damaging fourteen cities and razing four of them—including Gibellina— to the ground. The earthquake marked a sharp break in the historical continuity of the small, rural centre of Sicily. The original site of the town was abandoned and another city was built from scratch for the surviving inhabitants. The ci…
Understanding the purchasing behavior of consumers in response to sustainable marketing practices: An empirical analysis in the food domain
2021
Sustainability has become an important driver in defining business strategies, affecting most critical corporate functions and changing the way in which value is created, communicated, and distributed. This is increasingly impacting marketing practices, in particular, through promoting the development of sustainable marketing in the food sector. In line with this, our study aimed to investigate if and how sustainable marketing practices affect consumer loyalty to a specific brand. To answer our research questions, we relied on the results of a survey submitted to a sample of 907 Italian consumers of biscuits. Results showed that the consumers’ attention to sustainable issues (in the absence…
TOWARDS A LIVING-ORIENTED APPROACH TO URBAN DESIGN BY COSMOPOLITAN RISK COMMUNITIES
2021
At a defining moment for the future of life on Earth, active citizenship and informed communities play a decisive role in sensitising stakeholders to issues and influencing their decisions via physical and digital platforms. Anthropogenic climate change generates risks, causes migrations, expands inequalities, and mobilises people: these challenges question both the relationship of coexistence between different cultures and that between humans and other living species, such as animals, insects, and plants. If inhabiting cosmopolitan cities means living in and sharing a plural habitat, it is of utmost importance that we gather our collective expertise and rethink cities as welcoming spaces f…
Groundwater of Sicily (Italy) Close to Landfill Sites: Quality and Human Health Risk Assessment
2021
Groundwater close to three municipal solid waste landfill sites in Sicily (southern Italy) was sampled to determine the presence of contaminants and the risk associated with its possible use as drinking and sanitary water. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, polychlorinated dibenzofurans, and metals were investigated. These target compounds are the most common pollutants present in leachates. Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (RAGS, US EPA) was used to assess human health risk. Ingestion, dermal, and total exposure to these xenobiotic contaminants in groundwater were evaluated, and the cancer and non-cancer risk indexes were c…
Influence of Lymphangio (L), Vascular (V), and Perineural (Pn) Invasion on Recurrence and Survival of Resected Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma
2021
(1) Background: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a rare malignancy. Besides tumor, nodal, and metastatic status, the UICC TNM classification describes further parameters such as lymphangio- (L0/L1), vascular (V0/V1/V2), and perineural invasion (Pn0/Pn1). The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of these parameters on recurrence and survival. (2) Methods: All surgical explorations for patients with ICC between January 2008 and June 2018 were collected and further analyzed in our institutional database. Statistical analyses focused on perineural, lymphangio-, and vascular invasion examined histologically and their influence on tumor recurrence and survival. (3) Results: Of 2…
Saliency Features for 3D CAD-Data in the Context of Sampling-Based Motion Planning
2021
In this paper, we consider disassembly scenarios for real-world 3D CAD-data, where each component is defined by a triangle mesh. For a fast construction of collision-free disassembly paths, common approaches use sampling-based rigid body motion planning which is well studied in the literature. One fact that has so far received little attention is that in industrial disassembly scenarios components are often attached to each other with flexible fastening elements like clips. In the planning process, the fastening elements show the following characteristics: 1) They can cause complex non-linear disassembly paths. 2) They are often deformable. 3) They are usually modeled in a relaxed state and…
HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES: HOW TO IMPROVE NEOCOSMOPOLITANISM IN HISTORIC CENTRES
2021
The increased population density caused by the combination of predatory capitalism and the hyper-rational design of contemporary cities—starting with the rigid zoning of spaces and functions—began in the eighteenth century. Since the 1960s, the idea has spread that the Industrial Revolution was not, per se, a negative event, because the concentration of its effects caused the rise of the Anthropocene (Crutzen, Stoermer 2000). In this context, for the past fifty years, UNESCO and the Council of Europe have declared the social and cultural aspects of landscape and cultural identity preservation to be fundamental rights (Council of Europe 2000), and governments have approved laws and adopted o…
THE COSMOPOLITANISM OF COMMUNITIES: PUBLIC SPACE AS A GENERATOR OF EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY
2021
The era in which we live, that of the networked society, of the society of knowledge, of globalization, the era in which everyone is connected to each other by annihilating geographical distances thanks to the dematerialization allowed by virtual processes, is the era in which the intensification of flows in every direction contrasts with the materialisation of borders and barriers, the proliferation of inequalities, social conflicts and personal hardship. The social separation corresponds, therefore, to a spatial separation, which creates stigmatized neighbourhoods, concentrations of problems in specific areas such as, among all, the suburbs and some areas of the historic centres. Then one…
Neural Basis of Speech-Gesture Mismatch Detection in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
2021
AbstractPatients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) exhibit an aberrant perception and comprehension of abstract speech-gesture combinations associated with dysfunctional activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Recently, a significant deficit of speech-gesture mismatch detection was identified in SSD, but the underlying neural mechanisms have not yet been examined. A novel mismatch-detection fMRI paradigm was implemented manipulating speech-gesture abstractness (abstract/concrete) and relatedness (related/unrelated). During fMRI data acquisition, 42 SSD patients (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or other non-organic psychotic disorder [ICD-10: F20, F25, F28; DS…
Socioemotional Wealth and Networking in the Internationalisation of Family SMEs
2021
In internationalisation processes, international expansion exposes family SMEs to external networking and the risks such expansion entails, and perceived threats to their socioemotional wealth (SEW) might restrain their willingness to take these actions. However, very few studies measure SEW and associate it with internationalisation. Considering SEW preservation’s prominence in family SMEs and SMEs’ heavy dependence on networking during internationalisation, we hypothesise that SEW preservation has a negative association and networking has a positive association with the family SMEs’ degree of internationalisation (DOI). We reconstruct four SEW constructs that carry significance for family…
Subsequent Keyframe Generation for Visual Servoing
2021
International audience; In this paper, we study the problem of autonomous and reliable positioning of a camera w.r.t. an object when only this latter is known but not the rest of the scene. We propose to combine the advantages and efficiency of a visual servoing scheme and the generalization ability of a generative adversarial network. The paper describes how to efficiently create a synthetic dataset in order to train a network that predicts an intermediate visual keyframe between two images. Subsequent predictions are used as visual features to autonomously converge towards the desired pose even for large displacements. We show that the proposed method can be used without any prior knowled…
Multiverse Ethnography: A Qualitative Method for Gaming and Technology Use Research
2021
This article introduces multiverse ethnography as a systematic team-based qualitative method for studying the mechanical, structural and experiential properties of video games and other technological artefacts. Instead of applying the ethnographic method to produce a single in-depth account, multiverse ethnography includes multiple researchers carrying out coordinated synergetic ethnographic work on the same research object, thus producing a multiverse of interpretations and perspectives. To test the method, 41 scholars carried out a multiverse ethnography on two video games, Cyberpunk 2077 and Among Us. Explorative thematic findings regarding both titles are reported and methodological imp…
Verso l’«inesplorato fondo dell’io». De Roberto e la psicologia fin de siècle
2021
Il saggio mira ad analizzare le modalità con cui Federico De Roberto rappresenta e indaga il «fondo dell’incosciente», sulla scia delle acquisizioni della scienza e della psicologia coeve. A interessare lo scrittore non sono esclusivamente le dinamiche dell’ereditarietà, bensì i meccanismi occulti della psiche. I personaggi derobertiani sono agiti da impulsi irrazionali e involontari, che non riescono a governare ma che ne determinano i comportamenti. Inoltre, in anticipo sul Modernismo, De Roberto ritiene che qualsiasi raffigurazione verosimile del reale risulti sempre parziale, perché filtrata attraverso la lente deformante della soggettività. Nel trattato L’Amore. Fisiologia - Psicologia…
COSMOPOLITAN HABITAT WORKSHOP
2021
The Cosmopolitan Habitat workshop invites international PhD candidates, students, young scientists, academics, and urban planning and design professionals to discuss and reflect on the spatial dimension of migration, the different human cultures that increasingly characterize European cities, and new living spaces in the project area, the historic centre of Palermo. The students, together with young urban planning and design scientists, are asked to discover potentialities for Cosmopolitan Habitat in Palermo and design new future scenarios. The paper reports the outcomes of the workshop.
An automatic flow-through system for exploration of the human bioaccessibility of endocrine disrupting compounds from microplastics
2021
This article reports on the first attempt towards investigating the leaching rates in the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract of plastic-borne contaminants that can be ingested accidentally using physiologically relevant body fluids. Oral bioaccessibility under fasted and fed states was determined in dynamic mode exploiting an automatic flow setup. The flow system is able to mimic the fast uptake of the released species from the polymeric matrix by absorption in the human digestive system by the in-line removal of the leached species. Complex GI extractants based on the Unified Bioaccessibility Method (UBM, fasted state) and Versantvoort test (fed-state) were brought through a microplastic-lo…
Znaczenie rodziny w życiu skazanych poszkodowanych... – opinie, oceny i potrzeby
2021
The questions addressed in the present paper concern the family relations of persons deprived of freedomwho – remaining in the prison environment – have been degraded, that is convicts occupying the lowestrung in the informal penitentiary system, so-called victimized prisoners. They make a specific community,rejected and humiliated by other inmates. The necessity to ensure safety to them and help them protecttheir personal characteristics generates difficulties in activities of rehabilitative character.The aim of the research was to show the family relations of people degraded in the prison environment– a subject that has not been studied to date. The method of diagnostic survey was used, i…
A Recent Advancement: Casing while Drilling – A Viable Alternative to Conventional Drilling
2021
Mankind’s increased requirement for and dependence on energy resources, including the resources resulting from discovery and development of new hydrocarbon commercial reservoirs involves the use of new technologies such as optimization of the drilling process by reducing the non-productive time, the costs and the risks. Casing while drilling involves elimination of classical drilling string by using the casing string both for transmission to the bit of the mechanical energy and for circulation of drilling fluid into the well. Casing while drilling, constantly improving over time, has proven an efficient method to reduce risks, especially those related to the presence of a conventional…
Histological findings of osteonecrosis spotted prior to tooth extractions. Should we consider tooth extraction still the main trigger event?
2021
Osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) is an adverse drug reaction described as the progressive destruction and death of bone that affects the mandible and maxilla of patients exposed to the treatment with medications known to increase the risk of disease, in the absence of a previous radiation treatment. Tooth extraction often precedes the manifestation of ONJ; indeed, it is sometimes called trigger event and it have also been considered as risk factors for the onset of ONJ. As a consequence, some of the guidelines recommend avoiding tooth extractions in patients at risk of ONJ; however, a growing body of evidence indicates that dental/periodontal infection prior to extraction, rather than dental …
A Nomogram-Based Prognostic Model for Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Treated with Sorafenib: A Multicenter Study
2021
Simple Summary Accurate prognostic systems capable of predicting the survival of patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing Sorafenib therapy are still lacking. The search for the ideal predictive tool for survival and drug response is justified by the recent availability of several other drugs effective for these patients, licensed as first- and second-line treatment, other than reducing adverse events and costs. In this study, we aimed to identify simple demographic and clinical parameters able to predict survival and Sorafenib response in a large multicenter cohort. In this study, we showed that patient’s general status, liver function and damage laboratory parameters and…
Heterogeneity in Family Firms
2021
This research explores in greater depth the importance of considering the heterogeneity between family businesses so as to better understand the differences in their strategic behavior, performance and business results. With this, we attempt to contribute to the theories on the relationship between corporate governance and strategic management in the field of family business research.
 Our study identifies the different configurations that may be adopted in the ownership structures and the management and governance bodies of family firms, analyzing how these configurations are related to the firm’s strategic outcomes. Using a sample of 111 family firms, we perform a cluster analysis th…
Brauer’s Height Zero Conjecture for principal blocks
2021
Abstract We prove the other half of Brauer’s Height Zero Conjecture in the case of principal blocks.
A coupled discontinuous Galerkin-Finite Volume framework for solving gas dynamics over embedded geometries
2021
Author(s): Gulizzi, Vincenzo; Almgren, Ann S; Bell, John B | Abstract: We present a computational framework for solving the equations of inviscid gas dynamics using structured grids with embedded geometries. The novelty of the proposed approach is the use of high-order discontinuous Galerkin (dG) schemes and a shock-capturing Finite Volume (FV) scheme coupled via an $hp$ adaptive mesh refinement ($hp$-AMR) strategy that offers high-order accurate resolution of the embedded geometries. The $hp$-AMR strategy is based on a multi-level block-structured domain partition in which each level is represented by block-structured Cartesian grids and the embedded geometry is represented implicitly by a…
Triviality of the $J_4$-equivalence among homology 3-spheres
2021
We prove that all homology 3-spheres are $J_4$-equivalent, i.e. that any homology 3-sphere can be obtained from one another by twisting one of its Heegaard splittings by an element of the mapping class group acting trivially on the fourth nilpotent quotient of the fundamental group of the gluing surface. We do so by exhibiting an element of $J_4$, the fourth term of the Johnson filtration of the mapping class group, on which (the core of) the Casson invariant takes the value $1$. In particular, this provides an explicit example of an element of $J_4$ that is not a commutator of length $2$ in the Torelli group.
Supplementary material 1 from: Galasso G, Domina G, Andreatta S, Argenti E, Bacchetta G, Bagella S, Banfi E, Barberis D, Bardi S, Barone G, Bartolucc…
2021
Supplementary data
Too close for comfort? The impact of salesperson‐customer proximity on consumers' purchase behavior
2021
Across a series of lab and field studies, with a total sample of over 1200 participants, we investigate how the physical proximity between salespeople and customers can impact store loyalty, purchase intentions, and actual spending. An initial survey among a representative sample of retail salespeople reveals that they associate close physical proximity between employees and customers with positive consumer outcomes, an intuition that dovetails with prior research documenting the positive influence of such proximity on purchase intentions, particularly in nonexpressive consumption contexts. Contrary to this work, we demonstrate, across four studies in which proximity was both measured and m…
Bridging the gap between research and practice : using phenomenographic findings to develop training for career practitioners
2021
AbstractThis study contends that phenomenography offers both a useful research method and practical tools for developing education and training for career practitioners. After introducing the basic principles of phenomenography, the study reviews previous research on its potential in developing pedagogical practices. It explores how the phenomenographic findings were utilized to design an online skills training programme for career practitioners. The study finds that phenomenographic research serves three practical pedagogical purposes: (1) revealing how learners understand certain concepts or phenomena, (2) elucidating how these understandings differ; and (3) identifying critical aspects i…
TALPID3/KIAA0586 regulates multiple aspects of neuromuscular patterning during gastrointestinal development in animal models and human
2021
ABSTRACTTALPID3/KIAA0586 is an evolutionary conserved protein, which plays an essential role in protein trafficking. Its role during gastrointestinal (GI) and enteric nervous system (ENS) development has not been studied previously. Here, we analysed chicken, mouse and human embryonic GI tissues with TALPID3 mutations. The GI tract of TALPID3 chicken embryos was shortened and malformed. Histologically, the gut smooth muscle was mispatterned and enteric neural crest cells were scattered throughout the gut wall. Analysis of the Hedgehog pathway and gut extracellular matrix provided causative reasons for these defects. Interestingly, chicken intra-species grafting experiments and a conditional…
Expanding the clinical spectrum of mosaic BRAF skin phenotypes
2021
BRAF postzygotic activating mutations have been found in 50% of cases of syringocystadenoma papilliferum (SCAP)1 and in phacomatosis pigmentokeratotica (PPK)2,3 , also possibly caused by HRAS4 mutations. BRAF is a RAS-activating serine/threonine kinase of the MAP kinase pathway, resulting in cell growth and proliferation. BRAF mutations, particularly p.(Val600Glu), are frequently identified in melanoma and other human cancers5 . We report clinical presentations of three patients with postzygotic BRAF mutations in affected skin, identified by next generation sequencing (NGS).
PASSING IDENTITY AND ETHNIC CULTURE IN LATVIAN EMIGRANT FAMILIES
2021
The paper discusses the problem of preserving native Latvian language and the transfer of cultural identity in Latvian diaspora. One of the central tasks for Latvia’s diaspora policy is to support preservation of Latvian language and culture in diaspora with the aim of strengthening the Latvian identity and the sense of belonging to Latvia. Support is provided to diaspora schools for preserving Latvian language, culture and identity outside of Latvia. However, for children not to lose their Latvian language skills it is important that the language is used also in the family.This paper uses a combination of a quantitative survey and in-depth interviews with the parents of children in diaspor…
Sustainable Working Life in a Swedish Twin Cohort—A Definition Paper with Sample Overview
2021
Background: A unified or consensus definition of “sustainable working life” remains lacking, although studies investigating risk factors for labour market exit are numerous. In this study, we aimed (1) to update the information and to explore a definition of “sustainable working life” via a systematic literature review and (2) to describe the working life trajectories via the prevalence of sickness absence (SA), disability pension (DP), and unemployment in a Swedish twin cohort to provide a sample overview in our Sustainable Working Life-project. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted to explore the studies with the search phrase “sustainable working life” in PubMed, PsycInfo…
Laparoscopy in low-income countries: 10-years experience and systematic literature review
2021
Laparoscopy is a procedure that ultimately reduces hospital stay time and speeds up post-operative recovery. It is mainly performed in high-income countries but its implementation in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is increasing. However, no aggregate data exist regarding the outcomes of this procedure in resource-limited settings. We retrospectively reviewed all cases of laparoscopy recorded from January 2007 to March 2017 at the Department of Surgery of Beira to assess the related outcomes. Moreover, we performed a systematic review of the laparoscopic practices and outcomes in low-income countries. Data from the Department of Surgery of Beira identified 363 laparoscopic pro…