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Copyright of Italian Journal of Nursing (IJN) / Giornale Italiano di Infermieristica is the property of Collegio IPASVI MI-LO-MB - Ordine Professioni Infermieristiche MI-LO-MB and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 18th-century Europe inoculation of smallpox started being practiced as a form of prevention against the disease itself. Knowledge of this practice arrived from the Ottoman Empire and reached various European countries in the 1710s. As far as Italy is concerned, the literature generally reports that the Italians took no particular interest in inoculation until the 1750s; however, very little attention has been given to the early reception of the practice in Italy. By drawing on early news items and letter exchanges between the Fellows of the Royal Society and the Italian physician and naturalist Antonio Vallisneri, the present paper wants to illustrate and comment on these early sources that showed the Italians' opinions and attitudes towards inoculation when it was first heard about in the peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and compares the teaching methodologies of Moses Santagnello and James Hamilton, two foreign language teachers working in England in the first half of the 19th century. Santagnello and Hamilton were among the firsts to reconsider traditional methods of foreign language teaching, so that their criticism anticipated some of the issues later raised by the Reform Movement and later SLA researchers. The methods they developed differed considerably from one another; Santagnello was a supporter of a meaningful acquisition of foreign grammatical structures in the students' native language, while Hamilton believed grammar to be a hindrance on acquisition and suggested that language learning should start from reading practice. Common to both methods was the use of translation, although in different ways. Finally, worthy of consideration are also the authors' observations and ideas on the features of language learning and teaching of their time; indeed, both authors dealt with issues that are still highly debated in present-day language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first years of the Royal Society's existence, a whole network of natural philosophical exchanges was set up between the Fellows and foreign gentlemen interested in the study of nature. From the exchanges with Italy, medicine appears to be one of the major topics of interest; and a series of medical papers based on Italian researches appear in the Society's journal, the Philosophical Transactions (PT). This article is a linguistic and socio-historical analysis of 25 medical papers published in the PT in the first fifty years of its existence. The selected articles were either translations of Italian writings or reports of Italian research. The purpose of the study is: (1) to illustrate from a linguistic and socio-cultural point of view the nature of Italian medical contributions to the early PT; and (2) to investigate Anglo-Italian relations through the Royal Society's medical interaction with Italians by analysing the PT articles and further contextual resources from a critical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims/hypothesis: Recently, the novel myokine irisin was described to drive adipose tissue ‘browning’, to increase energy expenditure, and to improve obesity and insulin resistance in high fat-fed mice. Here, we assessed whether common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the FNDC5 locus, encoding the irisin precursor, contribute to human prediabetic phenotypes (overweight, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, impaired insulin release). Methods: A population of 1,976 individuals was characterized by oral glucose tolerance tests and genotyped for FNDC5 tagging SNPs. Subgroups underwent hyperinsulinaemic-euglycaemic clamps, magnetic resonance imaging/spectroscopy, and intravenous glucose tolerance tests. From 37 young and 14 elderly participants recruited in two different centres, muscle biopsies were obtained for the preparation of human myotube cultures. Results: After appropriate adjustment and Bonferroni correction for the number of tested variants, SNPs rs16835198 and rs726344 were associated with in vivo measures of insulin sensitivity. Via interrogation of publicly available data from the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium, rs726344’s effect on insulin sensitivity was replicated. Moreover, novel data from human myotubes revealed a negative association between FNDC5 expression and appropriately adjusted in vivo measures of insulin sensitivity in young donors. This finding was replicated in myotubes from elderly men. Conclusions/interpretation: This study provides evidence that the FNDC5 gene, encoding the novel myokine irisin, determines insulin sensitivity in humans. Our gene expression data point to an unexpected insulin-desensitizing effect of irisin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural stem cells (NSCs) generate new hippocampal dentate granule neurons throughout adulthood. The genetic programs controlling neuronal differentiation of adult NSCs are only poorly understood. Here we show that, in the adult mouse hippocampus, expression of the SoxC transcription factors Sox4 and Sox11 is initiated around the time of neuronal commitment of adult NSCs and is maintained in immature neurons. Overexpression of Sox4 and Sox11 strongly promotes in vitro neurogenesis from adult NSCs, whereas ablation of Sox4/Sox11 prevents in vitro and in vivo neurogenesis from adult NSCs. Moreover, we demonstrate that SoxC transcription factors target the promoters of genes that are induced on neuronal differentiation of adult NSCs. Finally, we show that reprogramming of astroglia into neurons is dependent on the presence of SoxC factors. These data identify SoxC proteins as essential contributors to the genetic network controlling neuronal differentiation in adult neurogenesis and neuronal reprogramming of somatic cells [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural stem cells (NSCs) generate new granule cells throughout life in the mammalian hippocampus. Canonical Wnt signaling regulates the differentiation of NSC5 towards the neuronal lineage. Here we identified the prospero-related homeodomain transcription factor Proxi as a target of β-catenin-TCF/LEF signaling in vitro and in vivo. Proxi overexpression enhanced neuronal differentiation whereas shRNA-mediated knockdown of Proxi impaired the generation of neurons in vitro and within the hippocampal niche. In contrast, Proxi was not required for survival of adult-generated granule cells after they had matured, suggesting a role for Proxi in initial granule cell differentiation but not in the maintenance of mature granule cells. The data presented here characterize a molecular pathway from Wnt signaling to a transcriptional target leading to granule cell differentiation within the adult brain and identify a stage-specific function for Proxi in the process of adult neurogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines medical studies which explore the neurogenic potential of progenitor cells. The neural circuitry of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) is examined by the scientists to repair damages caused by traumatic injury or neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, the procedures on how to prevent the loss of β-catenin signaling that affects hippocampal neurogenesis found in the impairment of neuronal maturation is also considered.

Schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders are quite common features in patients with DiGeorge/velocardiofacial syndrome (DGS/VCFS) as a result of hemizygosity of chromosome 22q11.2. We evaluated the PCQAP gene, which maps within the DGS/VCFS interval, as a potential candidate for schizophrenia susceptibility. PCQAP encodes for a subunit of the large multiprotein complex PC2, which exhibits a coactivator function in RNA polymerase II mediated transcription. Using a case-control study, we searched association between schizophrenia and the intragenic coding trinucleotide polymorphism. The distribution of the CAG repeat alleles was significantly different between patients and controls with the Mann-Whitney test (z = -2.5694, P = 0.0051; schizophrenics: n = 378, W = 161,002.5, Mean rank = 425.9325; controls: n = 444, W = 177,250.5, Mean rank = 399.2128). This result may indicate a possible involvement of the multiprotein complex PC2 in schizophrenia susceptibility., (Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)