3 research outputs found
Lifestyles and socio-cultural factors among children aged 6-8 years from five Italian towns: The MAPEC-LIFE study cohort
Background: Lifestyles profoundly determine the quality of an individualâs health and life since his childhood.
Many diseases in adulthood are avoidable if health-risk behaviors are identified and improved at an early stage of
life. The aim of the present research was to characterize a cohort of children aged 6â8 years selected in order to
perform an epidemiological molecular study (the MAPEC_LIFE study), investigate lifestyles of the children that
could have effect on their health status, and assess possible association between lifestyles and socio-cultural factors.
Methods: A questionnaire composed of 148 questions was administered in two different seasons to parents of
children attending 18 primary schools in five Italian cities (Torino, Brescia, Pisa, Perugia and Lecce) to obtain
information regarding the criteria for exclusion from the study, demographic, anthropometric and health
information on the children, as well as some aspects on their lifestyles and parental characteristics. The results
were analyzed in order to assess the frequency of specific conditions among the different seasons and cities and
the association between lifestyles and socio-economic factors.
Results: The final cohort was composed of 1,164 children (50.9 boys, 95.4% born in Italy). Frequency of some
factors appeared different in terms of the survey season (physical activity in the open air, the ways of cooking
certain foods) and among the various cities (parentsâ level of education and rate of employment, sport, traffic
near the home, type of heating, exposure to passive smoking, ways of cooking certain foods). Exposure to
passive smoking and cooking fumes, obesity, residence in areas with heavy traffic, frequency of outdoor play and
consumption of barbecued and fried foods were higher among children living in families with low educational
and/or occupational level while children doing sports and consuming toasted bread were more frequent in families
with high socio-economic level.
Conclusions: The socio-economic level seems to affect the lifestyles of children enrolled in the study including
those that could cause health effects. Many factors are linked to the geographical area and may depend on
environmental, cultural and social aspects of the city of residence
Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences
The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & NemĂ©sio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; NemĂ©sio 2009aâb; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported
by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on
18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based
researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016