In today's fashion system, dominated by business models predicated on continual consumption and globalized production systems that have major environmental and social impacts, the consumption of ...‘sustainable fashion’ takes on an almost paradoxical quality. This paper explores this paradox by focusing on a previously under‐researched group of consumers – ‘sustainable fashion consumption pioneers’ who actively engage and shape their own discourse around the notion of sustainable fashion consumption. These pioneers actively create and communicate strategies for sustainable fashion behaviour that can overcome the nebulous and somewhat paradoxical reality that sustainable development in the fashion industry presents. Specifically, we use passive netnography and semi‐structured interviews to illuminate the role of motivational and contextual factors that help shape these consumers' definitions of sustainable fashion including such key behaviours as purchasing fewer garments of higher quality, exiting the retail market, purchasing only second‐hand fashion goods and sewing or upgrading their own clothing. Central to much of these behaviours is the notion that personal style, rather than fashion, can bridge the potential disconnect between sustainability and fashion while also facilitating a sense of well‐being not found in traditional fashion consumption. As such, our research suggests that for these consumers sustainability is as much about reducing measurable environmental or social impacts as it is about incorporating broader concepts through which to achieve goals beyond the pro‐environmental or ethical.
We have developed an online catalog of SNP-trait associations from published genome-wide association studies for use in investigating genomic characteristics of trait/disease-associated SNPs (TASs). ...Reported TASs were common median risk allele frequency 36%, interquartile range (IQR) 21%-53% and were associated with modest effect sizes median odds ratio (OR) 1.33, IQR 1.20-1.61. Among 20 genomic annotation sets, reported TASs were significantly overrepresented only in nonsynonymous sites OR = 3.9 (2.2-7.0), p = 3.5 x 10⁻⁷ and 5kb-promoter regions OR = 2.3 (1.5-3.6), p = 3 x 10⁻⁴ compared to SNPs randomly selected from genotyping arrays. Although 88% of TASs were intronic (45%) or intergenic (43%), TASs were not overrepresented in introns and were significantly depleted in intergenic regions OR = 0.44 (0.34-0.58), p = 2.0 x 10⁻⁹. Only slightly more TASs than expected by chance were predicted to be in regions under positive selection OR = 1.3 (0.8-2.1), p = 0.2. This new online resource, together with bioinformatic predictions of the underlying functionality at trait/disease-associated loci, is well-suited to guide future investigations of the role of common variants in complex disease etiology.
Acute liver failure (ALF) is characterised by overwhelming hepatocyte death and liver inflammation with massive infiltration of myeloid cells in necrotic areas. The mechanisms underlying resolution ...of acute hepatic inflammation are largely unknown. Here, we aimed to investigate the impact of Mer tyrosine kinase (MerTK) during ALF and also examine how the microenvironmental mediator, secretory leucocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), governs this response.
Flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, confocal imaging and gene expression analyses determined the phenotype, functional/transcriptomic profile and tissue topography of MerTK+ monocytes/macrophages in ALF, healthy and disease controls. The temporal evolution of macrophage MerTK expression and its impact on resolution was examined in APAP-induced acute liver injury using wild-type (WT) and Mer-deficient (Mer
) mice. SLPI effects on hepatic myeloid cells were determined in vitro and in vivo using APAP-treated WT mice.
We demonstrate a significant expansion of resolution-like MerTK+HLA-DR
cells in circulatory and tissue compartments of patients with ALF. Compared with WT mice which show an increase of MerTK+MHCII
macrophages during the resolution phase in ALF, APAP-treated Mer
mice exhibit persistent liver injury and inflammation, characterised by a decreased proportion of resident Kupffer cells and increased number of neutrophils. Both in vitro and in APAP-treated mice, SLPI reprogrammes myeloid cells towards resolution responses through induction of a MerTK+HLA-DR
phenotype which promotes neutrophil apoptosis and their subsequent clearance.
We identify a hepatoprotective, MerTK+, macrophage phenotype that evolves during the resolution phase following ALF and represents a novel immunotherapeutic target to promote resolution responses following acute liver injury.
The determinants of food choice Leng, Gareth; Adan, Roger A H; Belot, Michele ...
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society,
08/2017, Letnik:
76, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Health nudge interventions to steer people into healthier lifestyles are increasingly applied by governments worldwide, and it is natural to look to such approaches to improve health by altering what ...people choose to eat. However, to produce policy recommendations that are likely to be effective, we need to be able to make valid predictions about the consequences of proposed interventions, and for this, we need a better understanding of the determinants of food choice. These determinants include dietary components (e.g. highly palatable foods and alcohol), but also diverse cultural and social pressures, cognitive-affective factors (perceived stress, health attitude, anxiety and depression), and familial, genetic and epigenetic influences on personality characteristics. In addition, our choices are influenced by an array of physiological mechanisms, including signals to the brain from the gastrointestinal tract and adipose tissue, which affect not only our hunger and satiety but also our motivation to eat particular nutrients, and the reward we experience from eating. Thus, to develop the evidence base necessary for effective policies, we need to build bridges across different levels of knowledge and understanding. This requires experimental models that can fill in the gaps in our understanding that are needed to inform policy, translational models that connect mechanistic understanding from laboratory studies to the real life human condition, and formal models that encapsulate scientific knowledge from diverse disciplines, and which embed understanding in a way that enables policy-relevant predictions to be made. Here we review recent developments in these areas.
Summary Acute liver failure (ALF) is a condition with a high mortality and morbidity for which new treatments are desperately required. We contend that although the initial event in ALF is liver cell ...death, the clinical syndrome of ALF and its complications including multi-organ dysfunction and sepsis, are largely generated by the immune response to liver injury. Hepatic macrophages fulfil a diversity of roles in ALF, from pro-inflammatory to pro-resolution. Their inherent plasticity means the same macrophages may have a variety of functions depending on the local tissue environment at different stages of disease. A better understanding of the mechanisms that regulate macrophage plasticity during ALF will be an essential step towards realising the potential of immune-modulating therapies that re-orientate macrophages to promote the desirable functions of attenuating liver injury and promoting liver repair/regenerative responses. The key dynamics: temporal (early vs. late phase), regional (hepatic vs. systemic), and activation (pro-inflammatory vs. pro-resolution) are discussed and the potential for novel ALF therapies that modulate monocyte/macrophage function are described.
Upgrading corncob residues (CCR) to a high quality energy resource is an effective utilization of an underutilized industrial lignocellulose waste. A hydrothermal carbonization technique was ...therefore employed to generate a high heating value (HHV) hydrochar. Results showed that its HHV increased 47% after treatment at 230 °C for 1.5 h. Decreases in H/C and O/C verified that reductions in C and O reactions were occurring following hydrothermal carbonization. The chemical and thermal properties of the final hydrochar as analyzed by FT-IR, TG/DTG, and XRD analyses indicated that dehydration and decarboxylation were the predominant pathways for the C and O reductions. The present hydrothermal carbonization process is offered as a promising approach to upgrade CCR to a high heating value hydrochar under mild conditions.
Creating more health-fostering environments is high on the agenda of public and private actors. The behavioral approach to nudge people towards healthier food choices is gaining popularity despite ...limited understanding about where, and for whom, which specific nudges work. This study contributes by reporting on three different nudging interventions in the same setting and presents effects on different sub-populations. We find overall small effects that are heterogeneous, ranging from robustly more to even less healthy choices. We discuss the importance of transparency and reactance to health interventions and the potential interplay of interventions with habitual behavior among different sub-populations.
Protean Power Katzenstein, Peter J; Seybert, Lucia A
01/2018, Letnik:
146
eBook
Odprti dostop
Mainstream international relations continues to assume that the world is governed by calculable risk based on estimates of power, despite repeatedly being surprised by unexpected change. This ground ...breaking work departs from existing definitions of power that focus on the actors' evolving ability to exercise control in situations of calculable risk. It introduces the concept of 'protean power', which focuses on the actors' agility as they adapt to situations of uncertainty. Protean Power uses twelve real world case studies to examine how the dynamics of protean and control power can be tracked in the relations among different state and non-state actors, operating in diverse sites, stretching from local to global, in both times of relative normalcy and moments of crisis. Katzenstein and Seybert argue for a new approach to international relations, where the inclusion of protean power in our analytical models helps in accounting for unforeseen changes in world politics.
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