Wrongful birth and wrongful life. Floodgate argument and the balancing of conytrasting rights in courts law making

The decision analyzed affects damages forthe born child because of the impossibility for the mother to exercise the right to abortion, as the diagnosis was missing and she was not aware of the hard risk for her physical and psychological health coming from the birth of a child affected by \u201cdown syndrome\u201d. The study starts from the distinction between: a)Wrongful birth: the personal damages suffered by pregnant women, who have not had the possibility of self-determining in the prosecution of the pregnancy in case of pathological processes of the fetus; in particular, in those cases when a disease exposes herself and her health to a severe risk (a pre-condition for abortion, according to the Italian L. 194/1978), caused by the doctor's breach of contract and, in particular, because of the latter not informing the patient of the fetus illness. b)Wrongful life: the damages suffered directly by the conceived but not yet born fetus, because of the missed abortion; this category of damages has been invoked often by parents in case of fetus malformations o genetic diseases, when it is not possible to ascertain the doctor's responsibility for the child's health damages, since the disease preexisted to medical treatment and intervention. The wrongdoing concerns only the lack of diagnosis and of subsequent information, as the woman consequently could not exert her right to choose abortion and the child was born, while she/he shouldn\u2019t have. After years of contrasting decisions SS.UU., has stated that there is no place for a \u201cright to birth only if healthy\u201d in the Italian legal system. In analyzing such decision, the study focus especially on: I. burden of proof; II. potential plaintiffs of such kind of action (parents, brother and sisters of the child and the child her/himself); III. comparative insights on how legislation, judges and scholars in other legal systems (Great Britain and France) have managed with the floodgate argument, the rights of both the woman and the \u201cunborn\u201d child

The European Union policies on access to justice and ADRs: good intentions are not enough as \u201cthe way to hell is paved with...\u201d.

Forms of extra-judicial dispute resolution are widespread in legal systems belonging to the western legal tradition and in the systems based on religion and tradition. With regard to the study this article refers to, cultural movements spreading and promoting ADR models have found place in legal systems based on the rule of law over the past fifty years, although with the necessary distinctions of institutional and, before that, socio-cultural nature. In a first phase, the European Union opened a broad debate to sensitize public awareness on the issues concerning the access to justice, the reduction of time and costs of a trial if compared to those when using ADRs, the respect of the weak parties in the legal-economic relations. On the other hand, in a second phase the EU carried out some early non-binding legislative initiatives, and later obliged Member States to legislate on the mediation in civil and commercial disputes

A new multi-modal database for developing speech recognition systems for an assistive technology application

In this paper we report on the acquisition and content of a new database intended for developing audio-visual speech recognition systems. This database supports a speaker dependent continuous speech recognition task, based on a small vocabulary, and was captured in the European Portuguese language. Along with the collected multi-modal speech materials, the respective orthographic transcription and time-alignment files are supplied. The package also includes data on stochastic language models and the generative grammar associated to the collected spoken sentences. The application addressed by this database, which consists of voice control of a basic scientific calculator, has the particularity of being designed for a person with a specific motor impairment, namely muscular dystrophy. This specificity is a remarkable characteristic, given the lack of such kind of data resources for developing assistive systems based on audio-visual speech recognition technology

Cytomegalovirus as a driver of excess cardiovascular mortality in rheumatoid arthritis: a red herring or a smoking gun?

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common inflammatory arthritis worldwide. Apart from its well known manifestations involving the joints (e.g. deformity, swelling, synovial inflammation), there are widespread, extra-articular manifestations that also involve the cardiovascular (CV) system. The consequences of CV involvement are often serious; cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and CV disease (CVD)-associated death are up to 50% higher in the context of RA leading to a reduction of life-expectancy in these patients of 3-10 years compared with the general population. To date, no satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon has been found, or maybe, it has been overlooked

Pepducins as a potential treatment strategy for asthma and COPD.

Current therapies to treat asthma and other airway diseases primarily include anti-inflammatory agents and bronchodilators. Anti-inflammatory agents target trafficking and resident immunocytes and structural cells, while bronchodilators act to prevent or reverse shortening of airway smooth muscle (ASM), the pivotal tissue regulating bronchomotor tone. Advances in our understanding of the biology of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and biased agonism offers unique opportunities to modulate GPCR function that include the use of pepducins and allosteric modulators. Recent evidence suggests that small molecule inhibitors of Gα q as well as pepducins targeting G q -coupled receptors can broadly inhibit contractile agonist-induced ASM function. Given these advances, new therapeutic approaches can be leveraged to diminish the global rise in morbidity and mortality associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Antimitogenic effect of bitter taste receptor agonists on airway smooth muscle cells

© 2016 the American Physiological Society. Airway remodeling is a hallmark feature of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Clinical studies and animal models have demonstrated increased airway smooth muscle (ASM) mass, and ASM thickness is correlated with severity of the disease. Current medications control inflammation and reverse airway obstruction effectively but have limited effect on remodeling. Recently we identified the expression of bitter taste receptors (TAS2R) on ASM cells, and activation with known TAS2R agonists resulted in ASM relaxation and bronchodilation. These studies suggest that TAS2R can be used as new therapeutic targets in the treatment of obstructive lung diseases. To further establish their effectiveness, in this study we aimed to determine the effects of TAS2R agonists on ASM growth and promitogenic signaling. Pretreatment of healthy and asthmatic human ASM cells with TAS2R agonists resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of ASM proliferation. The antimitogenic effect of TAS2R ligands was not dependent on activation of protein kinase A, protein kinase C, or high/intermediate-conductance calcium-activated K+ channels. Immunoblot analyses revealed that TAS2R agonists inhibit growth factor-activated protein kinase B phosphorylation without affecting the availability of phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate, suggesting TAS2R agonists block signaling downstream of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. Furthermore, the antimitogenic effect of TAS2R agonists involved inhibition of induced transcription factors (activator protein-1, signal transducer and activator of transcription-3, E2 factor, nuclear factor of activated T cells) and inhibition of expression of multiple cell cycle regulatory genes, suggesting a direct inhibition of cell cycle progression. Collectively, these findings establish the antimitogenic effect of TAS2R agonists and identify a novel class of receptors and signaling pathways that can be targeted to reduce or prevent airway remodeling as well as bronchoconstriction in obstructive airway disease

Decision making and model M. Mishel. Accept or not accept replacement surgery knee prosthetic

Introducción: La artroplastia total de rodilla (PTR) es eficaz en el alivio del dolor y la función en los casos de artrosis de rodilla (AR) grave. Representa un problema de salud pública por su prevalencia. A pesar de los resultados clínicos obtenidos con la PTR, diversos estudios refieren que entre un 14-30% de pacientes se muestran insatisfechos con el resultado, al no alcanzar los beneficios esperados, lo que conlleva que otros desestimen el tratamiento quirúrgico. El modelo de cuidados de M. Mishel pertenece al paradigma de la transformación, parte de la teoría social crítica e incorpora principios de la teoría del caos para elaborar su teoría de la incertidumbre; la enfermedad crónica desencadena un desequilibrio y las personas que la experimentan pueden incorporar esta incertidumbre para adquirir un nuevo sentido de la vida

Влияние размера частиц горной породы на параметры пневмотранспортирования

Приведені результати досліджень впливу розміру часток гірської породи, що транспортується, на параметри пневмотранспортування. Отримані залежності для визначення швидкості пневмотранспортування та витрат стислого повітря від розміру часток матеріалу, що транспортується, з урахуванням параметрів пневмотранспортної системи.The brought results over of researches of influence of size of parts of mountain breed that is transported, on the parameters of pneumatic portage. The got dependences are for determination of speed of pneumatic portage and charges of the compressed air from the size of parts of material that is transported, taking into account the parameters of the pneumatic portage system