Search results for "Issues"

Robots Like Me: Challenges and Ethical Issues in Aged Care.

2018

Robots have become a big issue in the twenty-first century, not least in elderly assistance. There are hopes that robots will make aged-care jobs less demanding, for example, they could help senior citizens maintain a longer independent life in their own home, assist caregivers in the nursing home, or provide company to the lonely. However, there are different opinions about the use of robots in our society. In 2012, a survey was conducted in 27 EU countries to examine the public's attitudes toward robots (Special Eurobarometer 382).1 More than 26.000 European citizens responded about the areas where they believe robots should be used as a priority or banned. The survey indicated that, in g…

Centenarian offspring: A model for understanding longevity

2013

Abstract: A main objective of current medical research is to improve the life quality of elderly people as priority of the continuous increase of ageing population. This phenomenon implies several medical, economic and social problems because of dramatic increase in number of non autonomous individuals affected by various pathologies. Accordingly, the research interest is focused on understanding the biological mechanisms involved in determining the positive ageing phenotype, i.e. the centenarian phenotype. In achieving this goal the choice of an appropriate study models is fundamental. Centenarians have been used as an optimal model for successful ageing. However, this model shows several …

“Positive biology”: the centenarian lesson

2012

Abstract The extraordinary increase of the elderly in developed countries underscore the importance of studies on ageing and longevity and the need for the prompt spread of knowledge about ageing in order to satisfactorily decrease the medical, economic and social problems associated to advancing years, because of the increased number of individuals not autonomous and affected by invalidating pathologies. Centenarians are equipped to reach the extreme limits of human life span and, most importantly, to show relatively good health, being able to perform their routine daily life and to escape fatal age-related diseases. Thus, they are the best example of extreme longevity, representing select…

2006

The first world wide symposium on the topic of gender-specific medicine provided the latest research on differences in sex and/or gender in medicine and medical care. The presentations ranged beyond the topic of reproduction to encompass the entire human organism. This report critically reviews three issues that emerged during the Conference: gender mainstreaming, the concept of sex/gender differences and the issue of men's health. It suggests that the interdisciplinary concept of gender-specific medicine has to be mirrored by the integration of social and cultural studies into medical research and practice.

ETHICS AND AGING: FOCUS ON LIVING WILL FOR PATIENTS WITH DEMENTIA

2017

Today dementia certainly represents a public health priority with a huge global impact on wordwide population. However, clinical and social issues related to dementia have long been marginalized. The actual high prevalence of dementias requires also to face issues from a bioethical perspective, regarding how to deal with demented patient’s disposition. There are currently no specific guidelines on the national territory regarding whether to draw up a living will by a patient with dementia, neither about the informative role of physicians during the progressive story of the disease.

A new actor involved in hypothalamic glucose detection : the Transient Receptor Potential Canonical (TRPC) channels

2015

Hyperglycemia is detected and integrated by the mediobasal hypothalamus (MBH) which, in turn, inhibits food intake and triggers insulin secretion. The MBH houses specialized glucose-sensitive (GS) neurons, which directly or indirectly modulate their electrical activity in response to changes in glucose level. In a first study, we hypothesized that indirect detection of glucose by MBH GS neurons involves the secretion of endozepine by astrocytes, a gliotransmitter known to inhibit food intake in response to hyperglycemia. The present work shows that endozepines selectively activate anorexigenic MBH pro-opiomelanotortine (POMC) neurons. In the second study, we show that the direct detection o…

On the role of internationalization of firm-level corporate governance: The case of audit committees

2022

Research Question/IssueMotivated by the agency theory and the findings of linguistic studies, we analyze the association between the internationalization of a firm's audit committee and its corporate governance.Research Findings/InsightsBased on data from 2159 publicly traded European firms from 15 countries for the period 2000–2018, we find that firms with foreign directors on their audit committees are associated with lower financial reporting quality. The association is mitigated by stronger country-level investor protection and a higher similarity among intra-committee languages. We further find that foreign directors on the audit committee are related to stock prices being less informa…

The governments' doctors: the roles and responsibilities of chief medical officers in the European Union.

2010

The regular meetings of the chief medical officers (CMOs) from the European Union's (EU's) 27 Member States provide an important forum to address issues of common interest affecting Europe's populations. Yet there is no universally agreed role for a CMO. This article describes the findings of a study, based on interviews with key informants and documentary analysis that sought to describe their diverse roles. For the purpose of this article, CMOs are defined as those sent by their governments to the regular EU meetings of CMOs. Four broad categories of countries were identified: those whose CMO is the most senior doctor in the health ministry, in some cases with responsibility spanning all …

Exploratory factorial structure of institutional authoritarianism

2019

Background . Social work focused on intervention has generated models ranging from charity to the establishment of devices as public and social policies have crystallized in exclusion processes such as social issues, social domination, social suffering, loss the social bond and streamlining other. Objective . Discuss the scope and limits of social work as a device address to the management policies of the -Tecnopolitica- communication and management of -Necropolitica- emotions. Method . Documental study with a selection of sources considering the keywords of exclusion, domination, suffering, tie and rationalization. Discussion . Social Work as a device intervention should consider forms of …

Mechanisms of gustatory perception of dietary lipids : cross-talk with bitter taste and endocannabinoid receptors

2018

Obesity is one of the major public health problems at the beginning of the 21st century. Its prevalence is increasing steadily, especially among children. This observation is not insignificant because obesity is generally associated with various serious pathologies (type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cancer, etc.). Thus, investigations into the mechanisms involved in the taste perception of dietary lipids could shed light on their roles in the incidence of obesity.Several studies have demonstrated the role of endocannabinoids and bitter foods in obesity. Thus, we studied the cross-talk of cannabinoid receptors and bitter taste with lipid taste. This thesis has two components: cannabinoid rec…