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Background: Risk behaviors are frequent among young adults and they are particularly relevant when considering healthcare students. Objectives: The study is aimed to examine the prevalence of smoking, binge drinking, physical inactivity, and excessive bodyweight in a population of healthcare students attending an Italian university. Methods: Healthcare students filled an anonymous multiple-choice questionnaire on the occasion of the occupational health visit that preceded their hospital internship. The questionnaire covered socio-demographic characteristics (including student’s working status and cohabitation) and risk behaviors. We evaluated the prevalence of risk behaviors and their association with socio-demographic characteristics. Results: The sample consisted of 494 students (65% women): 23.2% were smokers, 7.9% had excessive bodyweight, 35% did not practice any physical activity and 50% reported binge drinking at least once in the last 12 months. We found associations of male sex (30.5%) and being nursing students (29.9%) with smoking habit. The frequency of binge drinking was higher in men (38.4%), working students (53.9%), and among those who lived without family (50%). Physical inactivity was associated with female sex (44.2%) and living without family (57.1%). Finally, the co-presence of 2 risk behaviors or more was higher in men (36.8%), in nursing students (39.6%) and in working students (44.7%). Conclusions: Our findings regarding the prevalence of risk behaviors and their potential association with socio-demographic factors may be a clue to the definition of targeted strategies aimed at reducing of risk behaviors among healthcare students.

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is a concept critical to managing socio-ecological systems, but whose implementation needs strengthening. Scenario-planning is one approach that may offer benefits relevant to CBNRM, but whose potential is not yet well understood. We therefore designed, trialled and evaluated a scenario-planning method intended to support CBNRM at three cases, located in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. Implementing scenario-planning was judged as worthwhile in all three cases, although aspects of it could be challenging to facilitate. The benefits generated were relevant to strengthening CBNRM: encouraging the participation of local people and using their knowledge; enhanced consideration and adaption of future change; and supporting the development of systems thinking. Tracing exactly when and how these benefits arise is challenging, but two elements of the method seemed particularly useful. Firstly, using a systematic approach to discuss how drivers of change may affect local socio-ecological systems helped to foster systems thinking and identify connections between issues. Secondly, explicitly focusing on how to use and respond to scenarios helped identify specific practical activities ('response options') that would support CBNRM despite the pressures of future change. Discussions about response options also highlighted the need for support by other actors (e.g. policy groups): this raises the question of when and how other actors and other sources of knowledge should be involved in scenario-planning, so as to encourage their buy-in to actions identified by the process. We suggest other CBNRM initiatives may benefit from adapting and applying scenario-planning. However, these initiatives should be carefully monitored since further research is required to understand how and when scenario-planning methods may produce benefits, and their strengths and weaknesses versus other methods.

Plastic debris is thought to be widespread in freshwater ecosystems globally1. However, a lack of comprehensive and comparable data makes rigorous assessment of its distribution challenging2,3. Here we present a standardized cross-national survey that assesses the abundance and type of plastic debris (>250 μm) in freshwater ecosystems. We sample surface waters of 38 lakes and reservoirs, distributed across gradients of geographical position and limnological attributes, with the aim to identify factors associated with an increased observation of plastics. We find plastic debris in all studied lakes and reservoirs, suggesting that these ecosystems play a key role in the plastic-pollution cycle. Our results indicate that two types of lakes are particularly vulnerable to plastic contamination: lakes and reservoirs in densely populated and urbanized areas and large lakes and reservoirs with elevated deposition areas, long water-retention times and high levels of anthropogenic influence. Plastic concentrations vary widely among lakes; in the most polluted, concentrations reach or even exceed those reported in the subtropical oceanic gyres, marine areas collecting large amounts of debris4. Our findings highlight the importance of including lakes and reservoirs when addressing plastic pollution, in the context of pollution management and for the continued provision of lake ecosystem services.

The majority of microplastic research has focused on seawater, with fewer than 4% of microplasticsrelated studies occurring on freshwaters. The limited available information suggests that the abundance of microplastics in freshwaters is often as high or even higher than marine environments. However, comprehensive investigations on occurrence and fate of microplastics in freshwaters are scarce and highly fragmented, partly because detection and identification of microplastic particles is rather complex. In addition, up to now, harmonized and standardized protocols for the sampling and analysis of microplastics in freshwaters do not exist, and studies with different research aims and hypotheses often report unstandardized results, making comparison among studies difficult. In the present study, we performed the first global standardized sampling and analysis effort to investigate the occurrence and distribution of microplastics in surface water of lakes and reservoirs with different anthropogenic impacts. Participants aim to collect water samples of freshwater systems with different features (e.g., area, depth, thermal behavior, watershed), following a common protocol. This 18 establishes the collection of samples by horizontal trawling of a plankton net and, after treatment with hydrogen peroxide, the polymer identification through micro-Raman spectroscopy. This GLEON project will allow obtaining comparable data about microplastic contamination in different freshwater systems around the globe. With this global dataset, our goals are to determine whether a relationship exists between the abundance of microplastics and the waterbody/watershed attributes and understand which factors are likely to influence the occurrence of microplastics in surface water of lentic systems. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Background Patients with chronic heart failure may suffer from severe thirst, even if mechanisms that cause thirst in subjects affected by this condition are not clear. Medical and non-medical authors may have already recognized this symptom during the classical age. Methods We analyzed association between thirst and dropsy (an ancient medical term used to indicate different conditions including chronic heart failure) in past medical and non-medical literature. Results Hippocrates and Celsus first recognized thirst as a symptom of dropsy in the classical age. Greco-Roman intellectuals (Polybius, Ovid, Horace) and theologians belonging to the first years of the Christian era (Augustine, Caesarius, Gregory I) showed to know that dropsy people were often thirsty. These authors also influenced medieval poets and writers, including Dante Alighieri. In the Renaissance, the physician and alchemist Paracelsus again evidenced this symptom and the iatrochemist Robert Fludd tried to explain pathophysiology of dropsy, basing on thirst. Conclusions The relationship between thirst and dropsy was well known by physicians and intellectuals in the classical age and in the first years of the Christian era, so influencing the Renaissance physicians.

Even though unhealthy consequences of night work for women have been evidenced by international scientific literature only in recent years, they were well acknowledged from ancient times. This essay traces the historical evolution of women's health conditions at work, focusing specifically on nocturnal work. Using the legendary web of Penelope of ancient Greek myths as a metaphor, the paper analyses the early limitations of night-work for women in pre-industrial era and the development of a modern international legislation on this issue, aimed at protecting women's health at the beginning of the twentieth century. The reform of national legislations in a gender-neutral manner has recently abolished gender disparities in night-work, but it seems it also reduced women's protection at work.