Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element that is necessary for various metabolic processes, including protection against oxidative stress, and proper cardiovascular function. The role of Se in ...cardiovascular health is generally agreed upon to be essential yet not much has been defined in terms of specific functions. Se deficiency was first associated with Keshan's Disease, an endemic disease characterized by cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Since then, Se deficiency has been associated with multiple cardiovascular diseases, including myocardial infarction, heart failure, coronary heart disease, and atherosclerosis. Se, through its incorporation into selenoproteins, is vital to maintain optimal cardiovascular health, as selenoproteins are involved in numerous crucial processes, including oxidative stress, redox regulation, thyroid hormone metabolism, and calcium flux, and inadequate Se may disrupt these processes. The present review aims to highlight the importance of Se in cardiovascular health, provide updated information on specific selenoproteins that are prominent for proper cardiovascular function, including how these proteins interact with microRNAs, and discuss the possibility of Se as a potential complemental therapy for prevention or treatment of cardiovascular disease.
The salient chemical and physical features of the most dominant fundamental building block in the biosphere, cellulose nanocrystals, are discussed. Three general aspects of cellulose nanocrystals are ...covered: their morphology and chemistry, self-assembly in different media and their applications in the nanocomposites field.
Abstract
This paper focuses on policies that are enlightened by behavioural insights (BIs), taking decision-makers’ biases and use of heuristics into account and utilising a people-centric ...perspective and full acknowledgement of context dependency. Considering both the environmental and pandemic crises, it sketches the goal of resilient food systems and describes the contours of behavioural food policy. Conceptually built on BIs derived from behavioural economics, consumer research and decision science, such an approach systematically uses behavioural policies where appropriate and most cost-effective. BI informed tools (nudges) can be employed as stand-alone instruments (such as defaults) or used to improve the effectiveness of traditional policy tools.
Abstract
The GWAS Catalog delivers a high-quality curated collection of all published genome-wide association studies enabling investigations to identify causal variants, understand disease ...mechanisms, and establish targets for novel therapies. The scope of the Catalog has also expanded to targeted and exome arrays with 1000 new associations added for these technologies. As of September 2018, the Catalog contains 5687 GWAS comprising 71673 variant-trait associations from 3567 publications. New content includes 284 full P-value summary statistics datasets for genome-wide and new targeted array studies, representing 6 × 109 individual variant-trait statistics. In the last 12 months, the Catalog's user interface was accessed by ∼90000 unique users who viewed >1 million pages. We have improved data access with the release of a new RESTful API to support high-throughput programmatic access, an improved web interface and a new summary statistics database. Summary statistics provision is supported by a new format proposed as a community standard for summary statistics data representation. This format was derived from our experience in standardizing heterogeneous submissions, mapping formats and in harmonizing content. Availability: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/.
Do Europeans like nudges? Reisch, Lucia A.; Sunstein, Cass R.
Judgment and Decision Making,
07/2016, Letnik:
11, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
In recent years, many governments have shown a keen interest in “nudges” — approaches to law and policy that maintain freedom of choice, but that steer people in certain directions. Yet to ...date, there has been little evidence on whether citizens of various societies support nudges and nudging. We report the results of nationally representative surveys in six European nations: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom. We find strong majority support for nudges of the sort that have been adopted, or under serious consideration, in democratic nations. Despite the general European consensus, we find markedly lower levels of support for nudges in two nations: Hungary and Denmark. We are not, in general, able to connect support for nudges with distinct party affiliations.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
CEKLJ, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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•A new pathway for sustainable packaging materials was engineered by formulating multilayer CNF/CNC barrier coatings.•CNF and CNC synergistically enabled high oil and grease ...resistance (a kit rating of 11) comparable to fluorochemicals.•A significant reduction in oxygen transmission rate was demonstrated (∼by a factor of about 260) compared to uncoated paper.•Sustainable biomaterials are relevant to society’s ongoing efforts to improve health, safety, and environmental stewardship.
Cellulose derivatives such as cellulose nanofibers (CNF) and cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) have enormous potential to reduce or replace petroleum and fluorochemicals for food and other packaging applications. CNFs have been studied for their excellent oxygen and gas barrier properties; however, their performance rapidly decreases in the presence of moisture and higher humidity. CNCs are less sensitive to moisture due to their highly crystalline nature; however, coatings and films made of CNCs are much more prone to fracture due to their high brittleness. Our work demonstrates a unique composite barrier coating system of CNF and CNC that synergistically enables oil and grease resistance (a kit rating of 11) comparable to fluorochemicals. It also demonstrates a significant increase in air resistance (∼by a factor of about 300), and a reduction in oxygen transmission rate (∼by a factor of about 260) compared to uncoated paper. The improvements in oil and gas barrier properties were evaluated with respect to the molecular, chemical, and structural properties of the developed coatings.
In the past decade, policymakers have increasingly used behaviourally informed policies, including 'nudges,' to produce desirable social outcomes. But do people actually endorse those policies? This ...study reports on nationally representative surveys in five countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, South Korea, and the US) carried out in 2017/2018. We investigate whether people in these countries approve of a list of 15 nudges regarding health, the environment, and safety issues. A particular focus is whether trust in public institutions is a potential mediator of approval. The study confirms this correlation. We also find strong majority support of all nudges in the five countries. Our findings in general, and about trust in particular, suggest the importance not only of ensuring that behaviourally informed policies are effective, but also of developing them transparently and openly, and with an opportunity for members of the public to engage and to express their concerns.
Objective
This research investigated the effect of social class on personal control beliefs.
Background
Differences in personal control beliefs serve as a central theoretical explanation for social ...class differences in cognition, emotion, and behavior. However, prior empirical research has not yet conclusively demonstrated that personal control beliefs differ between social classes.
Method
Across four studies (total N = 138,417), we investigated the link between social class and personal control beliefs with well‐established measures of social class (e.g., ISEI, McArthur Scale),representative samples, and data that allow for causal conclusions (e.g., experimental, and longitudinal data).
Results
We found that (a) higher social class was associated with higher personal control beliefs across 60 countries. Furthermore, we observed that (b) higher social class of parents was associated with higher personal control beliefs in their children, and that (c) experimentally induced higher (vs. lower) social class led to increases (vs. decreases) of personal control beliefs.
Conclusions
Individuals from lower social classes consistently have weaker personal control beliefs than individuals from upper social classes. Social class differences in this fundamental personality characteristic are bound to have important consequences in various life domains (e.g., psychological and physical well‐being, and academic success).
Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of genetic variants associated with complex human diseases and traits, and have provided valuable insights into their genetic architecture. ...Most variants identified so far confer relatively small increments in risk, and explain only a small proportion of familial clustering, leading many to question how the remaining, 'missing' heritability can be explained. Here we examine potential sources of missing heritability and propose research strategies, including and extending beyond current genome-wide association approaches, to illuminate the genetics of complex diseases and enhance its potential to enable effective disease prevention or treatment.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The present paper focuses on green defaults as demand-side policies supporting the uptake of renewable energy in Germany. It sets out to gain a better understanding of whether and for whom green ...electricity defaults work. The present study is one of the first to use a large-scale data set to investigate this question. We combine micro-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) covering private households (including a wealth of individual information) with macro-level information such as population density of a region and proportion of energy suppliers in a given region that use a green opt-out tariff within their basic supply. We show that in Germany, green defaults, automatically enrolling customers in renewable energy sources, tend to stick, especially but not only among those who are concerned about the problem of climate change. This finding, based on real-world rather than experimental evidence, attests to the power of automatic enrollment in addressing environmental problems in Germany and potentially beyond, including climate change, and also adds to the growing literature on the substantial effects of shifting from opt-in to opt-out strategies.
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