Search results for "Weakness"
showing 10 items of 198 documents
Ornacitrus: Citrus plants (Citrus spp.) as ornamentals
2019
Abstract The industrial production of citrus plants for ornamental use (ornacitrus) began in Italy at the end of the 1960s due to the need for many citrus nurseries to adapt their activities in a time of crisis for citriculture. Nowadays, the ornamental citrus nursery sector is a well-established industry in many European countries such as Portugal, Spain, Greece, and southern Italy. In Italy, nursery production of ornamental citrus plants has become prominent due to the gradual shutdown of many commercial citrus orchards. Currently, Italy maintains its leadership with more than 5.5 million ornacitrus plants produced annually. Ornamental citrus production regards mainly different cultivars …
Planting Systems for Modern Olive Growing: Strengths and Weaknesses
2021
The objective of fully mechanizing olive harvesting has been pursued since the 1970s to cope with labor shortages and increasing production costs. Only in the last twenty years, after adopting super-intensive planting systems and developing appropriate straddle machines, a solution seems to have been found. The spread of super-intensive plantings, however, raises serious environmental and social concerns, mainly because of the small number of cultivars that are currently used (basically 2), compared to over 100 cultivars today cultivated on a large scale across the world. Olive growing, indeed, insists on over 11 million hectares. Despite its being located mostly in the Mediterranean countr…
When Is an Affordance? Outlining Four Stances
2016
Part 3: Exploring Affect and Affordance; International audience; Affordance has emerged as a core concept in information systems (IS) research during the last decade. This relational concept is applied to understand and theorize the relationship between the social and the technical. In the works of the concept originator James Gibson, the relation was mainly portrayed as an ever-existing fact between the natural environment and an animal. In contrast, IS research focuses on relationships in-the-making between artificial things and human beings. In the IS context, we have identified vagueness in temporal and relational ontology: when do affordances exist and between whom or what? In this pap…
Do terrorism, organized crime (drug production), and state weakness affect contemporary armed conflicts? An empirical analysis
2015
ABSTRACTIn 2014, the UN Security Council emphasized the dangers of terrorism, criminal activity (especially drug production and trafficking), and state weakness in conflict areas. However, neither policy debates nor scholarly analyses have focussed on the potential impact of these elements on conflict dynamics and characteristics, and the investigated partial relationships have led to inconclusive results. This article explores the presence in armed conflicts of terrorist groups among fighting parties, major drug production (indicating the presence of activities typical of criminal organizations), and state failure in the period 1990–2011. Focussing on intrastate conflicts, this article hig…
Papel de las ómicas en la nutrición de precisión: fortalezas y debilidades
2018
Precision medicine has taken huge strides forward in recent years. Although there is still no generally accepted single definition, it basically considers the particular characteristics of each person as relevant in order to better adapt therapeutic or preventive measures in a more personalized fashion. Likewise, the concept of precision nutrition has gathered strength, in which the aim is to provide the best dietary recommendations to prevent or treat a disease in accordance with the characteristics of the individual in question. Of special importance among these characteristics are those based on omics. Initially genomics, and now epigenomics, metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics …
Aerobic Exercise and Pharmacological Treatments Counteract Cachexia by Modulating Autophagy in Colon Cancer
2016
Recent studies have correlated physical activity with a better prognosis in cachectic patients, although the underlying mechanisms are not yet understood. In order to identify the pathways involved in the physical activity-mediated rescue of skeletal muscle mass and function, we investigated the effects of voluntary exercise on cachexia in colon carcinoma (C26)-bearing mice. Voluntary exercise prevented loss of muscle mass and function, ultimately increasing survival of C26-bearing mice. We found that the autophagic flux is overloaded in skeletal muscle of both colon carcinoma murine models and patients, but not in running C26-bearing mice, thus suggesting that exercise may release the auto…
The final word on nutritional screening and assessment in older persons
2017
Purpose of review: To provide an updated perspective of how nutritional screening and assessment in older persons should be performed and reasonably implemented in the near future. Recent findings: Although nutritional screening and assessment should be fast and easy procedures, there is increasing evidence that more time should be dedicated to them. This is probably an answer to the claim to a medicine being more preventive than curative. Increasing interest is currently given to healthy aging and nutritional status is more likely to be addressed for its implications on functional status and disability. Important prognostic conditions, such as frailty, sarcopenia, and cachexia, which are c…
Frailty Quantified by the "Valencia Score" as a Potential Predictor of Lifespan in Mice.
2017
The development of frailty scores suitable for mice and which resemble those used in the clinical scenario is of great importance to understand human frailty. The aim of the study was to determine an individual frailty score for each mouse at different ages and analyze the association between the frailty score and its lifespan. For this purpose, the "Valencia Score" for frailty was used. Thus, a longitudinal study in mice was performed analyzing weight loss, running time and speed, grip strength and motor coordination at the late-adult, mature and old ages (40, 56 and 80 weeks old, respectively). These parameters are equivalent to unintentional weight loss, poor endurance, slowness, weaknes…
A New Frailty Score for Experimental Animals Based on the Clinical Phenotype: Inactivity as a Model of Frailty.
2016
The development of animal models to study human frailty is important to test interventions to be translated to the clinical practice. The aim of this work was to develop a score for frailty in experimental animals based in the human frailty phenotype. We also tested the effect of physical inactivity in the development of frailty as determined by our score. Male C57Bl/6J mice, individually caged, were randomly assigned to one of two groups: sedentary (inactive) or spontaneous wheel-runners. We compared the sedentary versus the active lifestyle in terms of frailty by evaluating the clinical criteria used in humans: unintentional weight loss; poor endurance (running time); slowness (running sp…
Skeletal muscle-specific methyltransferase METTL21C trimethylates p97 and regulates autophagy-associated protein breakdown
2018
Summary: Protein aggregates and cytoplasmic vacuolization are major hallmarks of multisystem proteinopathies (MSPs) that lead to muscle weakness. Here, we identify METTL21C as a skeletal muscle-specific lysine methyltransferase. Insertion of a β-galactosidase cassette into the Mettl21c mouse locus revealed that METTL21C is specifically expressed in MYH7-positive skeletal muscle fibers. Ablation of the Mettl21c gene reduced endurance capacity and led to age-dependent accumulation of autophagic vacuoles in skeletal muscle. Denervation-induced muscle atrophy highlighted further impairments of autophagy-related proteins, including LC3, p62, and cathepsins, in Mettl21c−/− muscles. In addition, w…