144 research outputs found
The executive functions in overweight and obesity: a systematic review of neuropsychological cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
Background: The increasing incidence of people affected by overweight or obesity is a significant health problem. The knowledge of the factors which influences the inappropriate eating behaviors causing excessive body fat is an essential goal for the research. Overweight and obesity are significant risk factors for many health diseases, such as cardiovascular problems, diabetes. Recently, many studies have focused on the relationship between body weight and cognitive processes.
Objectives: This systematic review is aimed to investigate the existence and the nature of the relationship between excessive body weight (overweight/obesity) and executive functions, analyzing cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies in order to verify the evidence of a possible causality between these variables.
Methods: The review was carried out according to the PRISMA-Statement, through systematic searches in the scientific databases PubMed, Medline, PsychInfo, and PsycArticles. The studies selected examined performance on executive tasks by participants with overweight or obesity, aged between 5 and 70 years. Studies examining eating disorders or obesity resulting from other medical problems were excluded. Furthermore, the results of studies using a cross-sectional design and those using a longitudinal one were separately investigated.
Results: Sixty-three cross-sectional studies and twenty-eight longitudinal studies that met our inclusion and exclusion criteria were analyzed. The results confirmed the presence of a relation between executive functions and overweight/obesity, although the directionality of this relation was not clear; nor did any single executive function emerge as being more involved than others in this relation. Despite this, there was evidence of a reciprocal influence between executive functions and overweight/obesity.
Conclusions: This systematic review underlines the presence of a relationship between executive functions and overweight/obesity. Moreover, it seems to suggest a bidirectional trend in this relationship that could be the cause of the failure of interventions for weight reduction. The results of this review highlight the importance of a theoretical model able to consider all the main variables of interest, with the aim to structuring integrated approaches to solve the overweight/obesity problems
Percezione visiva del colore: "un caso di analisi del colore in ambito musivo"
Come si determina la percezione del colore? La domanda ha interessato generazioni di studiosi, ne Ăš conferma la continua analisi alla quale Ăš sottoposta ancora oggi la visione del colore da parte dei fisici, ottici, neurologi e fisiologi.
Lo studio sul colore mette in evidenza la diversitĂ di âlinguaggioâ degli artisti (campo estetologico), con quello degli scienziati che si occupano di colorimetria. La corretta utilizzazione di un glossario relativo al colore permetterĂ e migliorerĂ la comunicabilitĂ tra storici dellâarte e scienziati
Executive functions in Alzheimer disease. A systematic review
Alzheimer's disease is a severe irreversible syndrome, characterized by a slow and progressive cognitive decline that interferes with the standard instrumental and essential functions of daily life. Promptly identifying the impairment of particular cognitive functions could be a fundamental condition to limit, through preventive or therapeutic interventions, the functional damages found in this degenerative dementia. This study aims to analyse, through a systematic review of the studies, the sensitivity of four experimental paradigms (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Stroop Task, Go/No-Go Task, and Flanker Task) considered as golden standard instruments for executive functions assessment in elderly subjects affected by Alzheimer dementia. This review was carried out according to the PRISMA method. Forty-five studies comparing the executive performance of patients with Alzheimer's dementia (diagnosed according to different classification criteria for dementia) and healthy elderly patients both over the age of sixty, were selected. For the research, PubMed, PsycINFO, PsycArticles databases were used. The study highlighted the importance of using standard protocols to evaluate executive dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease. The Stroop task allows discriminating better between healthy and pathological agin
Learning-based MPC using Differentiable Optimisation Layers for Microgrid Energy Management
In this paper we present a learning-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm based on differentiable optimisation layers. Recent works show that it is possible to include an optimisation problem as a network layer in a Neural Network (NN) architecture. Here the MPC optimisation problem is integrated on the last layer of a NN which is used to estimate the uncertain parameters of the objective function. The NN is then trained online, end-to-end (E2E), based on previous control actions performance. We show that directly targeting the optimality of the control actions leads to improved control results with respect to the standard method of estimating the uncertain parameters and then perform the optimisation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated on a microgrid energy management problem where the future profile of the electricity price is not know
Emotional regulation and overeating behaviors in children and adolescents: a systematic review
The worldwide prevalence of obesity has dramatically increased, mostly in children and adolescents. The Emotional Eating theoretical model has proposed that the failure in emotional regulation could represent a risk factor for establishing maladaptive overeating behavior that represents an inadequate response to negative emotions and allows increasing body-weight. This systematic review investigates the relationship between overeating and both emotional regulation and emotional intelligence in childhood and adolescence, considering both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Moreover, another goal of the review is evaluating whether emotional regulation and emotional intelligence can cause overeating behaviors. The systematic search was conducted according to the PRISMA-statement in the databases Medline, PsychArtcles, PsychInfo, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Sciences, and allows 484 records to be extracted. Twenty-six studies were selected according to inclusion (e.g., studies focused on children and adolescents without clinical conditions; groups of participants overweight or with obesity) and exclusion (e.g., studies that adopted qualitative assessment or cognitive-affective tasks to measure emotional variables; reviews, commentary, or brief reports) criteria detailed in the methods. Cross-sectional studies showed a negative association between emotional regulation and overeating behavior that was confirmed by longitudinal studies. These findings highlighted the role of maladaptive emotion regulation on overeating and being overweight. The relationship between these constructs in children and adolescents was consistent. The results indicated the complexity of this association, which would be influenced by many physiological, psychological, and social factors. These findings underline the need for further studies focused on emotion regulation in the development of overeating. They should analyze the mediation role of other variables (e.g., attachment style, peer pressure) and identify interventions to prevent and reduce worldwide overweight prevalence
Bingeâwatching: development and validation of the BingeâWatching Addiction Questionnaire
The approach to the vision of TV series has deeply changed in the last years, and watching
multiple episodes of TV content in a single session becomes a popular viewing pattern referred as
bingeâwatching. Early studies defined bingeâwatching as a potentially addictive behavior showing
characteristics similar to other behavioral addictions, such as loss of control and pleasure
anticipation. This study aims to validate a short selfâreport questionnaire focused on assessing
bingeâwatching behavior and determining whether it shows characteristics similar to addictive
behavior, the BingeâWatching Addiction Questionnaire (BWAQ). An online survey was adopted to
administer the questionnaire in the general population (N = 1277). Exploratory and confirmatory
factor analyses assessed both the validity and the structure of the scale in two independent samples.
The statistical analyses confirmed a fourâfactor model (i.e., âCravingâ, âDependencyâ,
âAnticipationâ, âAvoidanceâ) of the BWAQ with good psychometric properties. The BWAQ can
differentiate between people who adopt maladaptive watching activities from those who use TVseries
as leisure and entertainment activities. Therefore, this questionnaire may enable researchers
to improve this emerging field of research significantly
Food-Related Attentional Bias in Individuals with Normal Weight and Overweight: A Study with a Flicker Task
The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate attentional biases for
food-related stimuli in individuals with overweight and normal weight using a flicker paradigm.
Specifically, it was tested whether attention allocation processes differ between individuals with
overweight and normal weight using transient changes of food-related and neutral pictures. Change
detection latencies in objects of central interest (CI) or objects of marginal interest (MI) were measured
as an index of attention allocation in a sample of fifty-three students with overweight/obesity and sixty
students with normal weight during a flicker paradigm with neutral, hypercaloric and hypocaloric
food pictures. Both groups of participants showed an attentional bias for food-related pictures
as compared to neutral pictures. However, the bias was larger in individuals with overweight
than in individuals with normal weight when changes were of marginal interest, suggesting a
stronger avoidance of the food-related picture. This study showed that food-related stimuli influence
attention allocation processes in both participants with overweight and normal weight. In particular,
as compared to individuals with normal weight, those with overweight seem to be characterised by
a stronger attentional avoidance of (or smaller attention maintenance on) food-related stimuli that
could be considered as a voluntary strategy to resist food consumption
Resilient Microgrid Energy Management Algorithm Based on Distributed Optimization
This article proposes a fully distributed energy management algorithm for dc microgrids, resilient to different faults. Specifically, we employ distributed model-predictive control to deal with the uncertainty that characterizes the microgrid operation. The optimization problem is solved at each time step through a distributed optimization algorithm, which has three main advantages: 1) agents of the network require a small computational power; 2) local information is not shared among the network nodes, hence preserving a certain level of privacy; and 3) it is suitable for implementation in large-scale systems. The resilience property of the algorithm stems from additional constraints that are enforced in order to store in the system enough energy to sustain the microgrid in the case of utility grid or line fault. Simulation results show that the algorithm is suitable to schedule the operation of agents that are always connected to the microgrid (e.g., loads) as well as agents that may be connected and disconnected (e.g., electric vehicles)
Data-driven design: the new challenges of digitalization on product design and development
Abstract
Digitalization and the momentous role being assumed by data are commonly viewed as pervasive phenomena whose impact is felt in all aspects of society and the economy. Design activity is by no means immune from this trend, and the relationship between digitalization and design is decades old. However, what is the current impact of this 'data revolution' on design? How will the design activity change? What are the resulting research questions of interest to academics? What are the main challenges for firms and for educational institutions having to cope with this change? The paper provides a comprehensive conceptual framework, based on recent literature and anecdotal evidence from the industry. It identifies three main streams: namely the consequences on designers, the consequences on design processes and the role of methods for data analytics. In turn, these three streams lead to implications at individual, organizational and managerial level, and several questions arise worthy of defining future research agendas. Moreover, the paper introduces relational diagrams depicting the interactions between the objects and the actors involved in the design process and suggests that what is occurring is by no means a simple evolution but a paradigmatic shift in the way artefacts are designed
Atomic diffusion and mixing in old stars VI: The lithium content of M30
The prediction of the PLANCK-constrained primordial lithium abundance in the
Universe is in discordance with the observed Li abundances in warm Population
II dwarf and subgiant stars. Among the physically best motivated ideas, it has
been suggested that this discrepancy can be alleviated if the stars observed
today had undergone photospheric depletion of lithium. The cause of this
depletion is investigated by accurately tracing the behaviour of the lithium
abundances as a function of effective temperature. Globular clusters are ideal
laboratories for such an abundance analysis as the relative stellar parameters
of their stars can be precisely determined. We performed a homogeneous chemical
abundance analysis of 144 stars in the metal-poor globular cluster M30, ranging
from the cluster turnoff point to the tip of the red giant branch. NLTE
abundances for Li, Ca, and Fe were derived where possible. Stellar parameters
were derived by matching isochrones to the observed V vs V-I colour-magnitude
diagram. Independent effective temperatures were obtained from automated
profile fitting of the Balmer lines and by applying colour-T_eff calibrations
to the broadband photometry. Li abundances of the turnoff and early subgiant
stars form a thin plateau that is broken off abruptly in the middle of the SGB
as a result of the onset of Li dilution caused by the first dredge-up.
Abundance trends with effective temperature for Fe and Ca are observed and
compared to predictions from stellar structure models including atomic
diffusion and ad hoc additional mixing below the surface convection zone. The
comparison shows that the stars in M30 are affected by atomic diffusion and
additional mixing. After applying a conservative correction for atomic
diffusion, we find an initial Li abundance of A(Li) = for the
globular cluster M30.Comment: 13 pages, 7 tables (Tab. 1 and 5 can be obtained at ADS) and 8
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