Physical exercise,nutrition and hormones: three pillars to fight sarcopenia

Background: Sarcopenia is a pathophysiological condition diffused in elderly people; it represents a social issue due to the longer life expectancy and the growing aging population. It affects negatively quality of life and it represents a risk factor for other pathologies, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. No silver bullet exists to hinder sarcopenia, but it may be counteracted by physical exercise, nutrition, and a proper endocrine milieu. Indeed, we aim to analyze the scientific literature to give to clinician effective advices to counteract sarcopenia.

Main text: Physical exercise, proper nutrition, optimized hormonal homeostasis represent the three pillars to fight sarcopenia. Physical exercise represents the most effective remedy to face sarcopenia, in particular if it is combined with a proper diet and with an adequate endocrine milieu. Consistency in training, adequate daily protein intake and eugonadism seems to be the keys to fight sarcopenia. The combination of these three pillars might act synergistically.

Conclusions: Optimization of these factors may increase their efficiency; however, scientific data may be sometimes confusing so far. Therefore, we aim to give practical advices to clinician to identify and to highlight the most important aspects in each of these three factors that should be addressed.     

Therapeutic Assessment with Children in Family Therapy

Therapeutic Assessment with Children (TA‐C) is a brief semi‐structured intervention in which psychological assessment is used to help families with children and adolescents to change. In this paper we introduce the TA‐C model, describe its semi‐structured format and exemplify how it can be applied by family therapists.     

CCTV oddity: archaeology and aesthetics of video surveillance

The paper narrates #OCTV – an art installation, performance and hacktivist project – the authors presented at the International Visual Sociology Association annual conference (Goldsmiths 2013). The installation used networked CCTV cameras and affordance of digital media to make surveillance space visible, beyond its representational value. It played with the co-constitution of the surveillance images through technologies, cultural practices, and ethics. The paper suggests the visual work of CCTV cameras is contextual to the specific configuration surveillance ecology takes. It proposes art projects as critical methodology for unpacking the social construction of the digital image. As a consequence, it recognises the challenges of using once-upon-a-time ethics forms with regards to ecologies of the visual. Instead, it suggests an ethical and political tension which should follow research ‘data’ during the lifetime of the project, and possibly in the ecologies yet to come.     

A Network-Based Measure of the Socio-Economic Roots of the Migration Flows

Social Indicators Research - This paper provides a unified view for defining a measure of the reasons behind migration flows whose nature is of social and economic type. To this aim, worldwide...     

Personality and psychopathological profiles in individuals exposed to mobbing

Increasingly, mental health and medical professionals have been asked to assess claims of psychological harm arising from harassment at the workplace, or "mobbing." This study assessed the personality and psychopathological profiles of 146 individuals exposed to mobbing using validity, clinical, and content scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2. Profiles and factor analyses were obtained. Two major dimensions emerged among those exposed to mobbing: (a) depressed mood, difficulty in making decisions, change-related anguish, and passive-aggressive traits (b) somatic symptoms, and need for attention and affection. This cross-sectional pilot study provides evidence that personality profiles of mobbing victims and psychological damage resulting from mobbing may be evaluated using standardized assessments, though a longitudinal study is needed to delineate cause-and-effect relationships.     

Europeanisation and the Youth Guarantee: The case of France

In 2013, the European Council approved the Youth Guarantee (YG) to counteract youth unemployment. Because of its specific features, the YG is useful for understanding whether the EU has triggered policy change in national youth unemployment policies. Contrary to most of the literature on similar topics, we focused in this study on the effect of this specific European measure rather than on broader EU strategies or policies. The study contributes to the literature by qualifying the degree of fit/misfit and suggesting a counterfactual analysis, using the case of France. We first situate the article within the broader Europeanisation debate and present our research design. The second section introduces the policy structure of the YG and investigates youth unemployment policy in France, prior to and after the European initiative. The third section discusses whether the French youth unemployment policy would have been developed in the same way without the YG. A final section concludes.     

Assessing Prejudice Toward Two-Father Parenting and Two-Mother Parenting: The Beliefs on Same-Sex Parenting Scale

This article describes two interrelated studies that investigated beliefs and stereotypes on two-father parenting and two-mother parenting through the development and validation of the Beliefs on Same-Sex Parenting (BOSSP) scale. The BOSSP captures two beliefs: (1) prejudices toward same-sex couples’ inherent inability to parent and (2) concerns about same-sex parenting that are not necessarily related to homonegativity. In Study 1 (301 heterosexual participants), exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested an 11-item scale for attitudes toward both two-father families and two-mother families, with two factors: parenting skills, which evaluates beliefs on same-sex couples’ ability to take care of their children; and parental adjustment, which assesses beliefs on the impact of challenges related to same-sex parenting on children’s well-being. Support for convergent validity between BOSSP factor scores and those of theoretically related measures were provided. In Study 2 (346 heterosexual participants surveyed in two time points), CFA indicated that the two-factor model provided the best fit. Test-retest reliability and longitudinal invariance were documented. Finally, results revealed that more negative attitudes toward same-sex parenting were held by men than by women and were associated with negative opinions on reproductive techniques. The innovative characteristics of the BOSSP and implications for future practice are discussed.     

Improved multivariate prediction regions for Markov process models

This paper concerns the specification of multivariate prediction regions which may be useful in time series applications whenever we aim at considering not just one single forecast but a group of consecutive forecasts. We review a general result on improved multivariate prediction and we use it in order to calculate conditional prediction intervals for Markov process models so that the associated coverage probability turns out to be close to the target value. This improved solution is asymptotically superior to the estimative one, which is simpler but it may lead to unreliable predictive conclusions. An application to general autoregressive models is presented, focusing in particular on AR and ARCH models.     

Strengthening Purity: Moral Purity as a Mediator of Direct and Extended Cross-Group Friendships on Sexual Prejudice

The present research investigated whether enhanced perceptions of moral purity drive the effects of intergroup cross-group friendships on the intentions to interact with homosexuals. High-school students (N = 639) reported their direct and extended cross-group friendships with homosexuals as well as their beliefs regarding the moral character of the sexual minority. Participants further reported their desire to interact with homosexuals in the future. Results showed that both face-to-face encounters and extended contact with homosexuals increased their perceived moral purity, which in turn fostered more positive behavioral intentions. Results further revealed the specific role of moral purity in this sense, as differential perceptions along other moral domains (autonomy and community) had no mediation effects on behavioral tendencies toward homosexuals. The importance of these findings for improving intergroup relations is discussed, together with the importance of integrating research on intergroup contact and morality.