Anorexia nervosa and reproduction: connecting brain to gonads

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric disorder that predominantly affects young women and is characterized by low caloric intake and a major dissatisfaction with one’s body image. It is often overlooked and, while patients and family seek medical help, emaciation and nutritional misbalances may become extreme and potentially life threatening. Among the many somatic complications, an accumulation of early endocrine adaptations occurs, leading to functional amenorrhea and impaired reproduction as a result of dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis. Even though these conditions are reversible, long-term consequences may affect the fertility of women with AN and can lead to maternal and fetal complications during pregnancy and birth. This review presents the clinical particularities of reproduction in the context of AN, along with the possible pathophysiological mechanisms involved

Professor Gavril Ardelean (5 May 1942 – 3 October 2016)

GAVRIL ARDELEAN was born on May 5, 1942 in Seini, Maramureș County, Romania. He graduated the elementary school in Seini (1956) and “Gh. Șincai” High School in Baia Mare (1960). During the next years, Gavril Ardelean attended the Faculty of Biology, Geography and Geology (Babeș-Bolyai University) in Cluj, graduating in 1965 with a major in Biology and Geography. Until 1990, he taught Biology and Geography in several high schools in Vișeu de Sus, Tășnad, and Satu Mare. In 1979, Gavril Ardelean came back to Alma Mater Napocensis as a doctoral student, under the prestigious supervision of Academician Eugen A. Pora, who cherished him as an eminent disciple. As Professor Pora passed away in October 1981, Gavril continued his research under the supervision of Professor Dumitru I. Roșca. The experimental part of his thesis was performed in the Biochemistry facilities of the Faculty of Biology, with the scientific help and kind assistance of Professor Ioan V. Deaciuc

Professor Iosif Viehmann (1 September 1925 – 6 August 2016)

IOSIF VIEHMANN (Pepi, for family and friends) came to this world the first of September 1925, as the son of Iosif Viehmann, violonist at the Romanian Opera in Cluj, and Elisabeta Mureșan. In 1940, after the loss of a part of Transylvania by the Vienna Dictum, Iosif (16 years old) and his brother Eugen (11 years old) fled to Timișoara with their mother. Here, the young Iosif Viehmann graduated the National College “C. D. Loga” in 1944. After returning to Cluj, Iosif enrolled in the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the “Victor Babeș” University and graduated in 1950 with a thesis on the genesis of stalagmites. There is a Romanian saying: “The man blesses the place”. This is certainly true for Pepi, throughout his life. The university assistant position was refused to the newly licensed Iosif Viehmann, because of his declared sympathy for the Liberal Party and for the Americans, his monarchist feelings, and for having close relatives in Germany (his father and brother). Therefore, he ended as a highschool teacher in Năsăud (Pedagogical School, 1952-1956), where he succeeded to inspire his pupils the love for studying, for nature, culture, and... for caves. He founded, with their help, a Laboratory for Natural Sciences, organized school trips and spelelological explorations. In 1956, he was finally nominated scientific researcher at the “Emil Racoviță” Speleological Institute in Cluj, where he worked for the rest of his long and successfull career

Why bad ideas are a good idea

What would happen if we wrote an Abstract that was the exact opposite of what the paper described? This is a bad idea, but it makes us think more carefully than usual about properties of Abstracts. This paper describes BadIdeas, a collection of techniques that uses ???bad??? or ???silly??? ideas to inspire creativity, explore design domains and teach critical thinking in interaction design. We describe the approach, some evidence, how it is performed in practice and experience in its use.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

How universities influence societal impact practices:Academics’ sense-making of organizational impact strategies

Societal impact of academic research has become a central concern of contemporary science policies. As key players in the higher education sector, universities play a crucial role in translating policy into organizational strategies, which then have the potential to shape academics' practices. This article investigates the influence that universities may have on academics' impact practices. We employ an analytical framework that combines a novel method for studying university impact strategies, sense-making theory, and insights from literature on impact. Our data consist of interviews with sixteen philosophers and anthropologists working across four universities in the Netherlands and the UK. We find that, in response to organizational goals and Human Resource Management policies, academics report changing their impact practices. We call for universities to use their influence responsibly in order to enable a broad range of impact practices

Optimization of a Ribosomal Structural Domain by Natural Selection

A conserved, independently folding domain in the large ribosomal subunit consists of 58 nt of rRNA and a single protein, L11. The tertiary structure of an rRNA fragment carrying the Escherichia coli sequence is marginally stable in vitro but can be substantially stabilized by mutations found in other organisms. To distinguish between possible reasons why natural selection has not evolved a more stable rRNA structure in E. coli, mutations affecting the rRNA tertiary structure were assessed for their in vitro effects on rRNA stability and L11 affinity (in the context of an rRNA fragment) or in vivo effects on cell growth rate and L11 content of ribosomes. The rRNA fragment stabilities ranged from -4 to +9 kcal/mol relative to the wild-type sequence. Variants in the range of -4 to +5 kcal/mol had almost no observable effect in vivo, while more destabilizing mutations (\u3e7 kcal/mol) were not tolerated. The data suggest that the in vivo stability of the complex is roughly -6 kcal/mol and that any single tertiary interaction is dispensable for function as long as a minimum stability of the complex is maintained. On the basis of these data, it seems that the evolution of this domain has not been constrained by inherent structural or functional limits on stability. The estimated stability corresponds to only a few ribosomes per bacterial cell dissociated from L11 at any time; thus the selective advantage for any further increase in stability may be so small as to be outweighed by other competing selective pressures

Anorexia nervosa and reproduction: connecting brain to gonads

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a psychiatric disorder that predominantly affects young women and is characterized by low caloric intake and a major dissatisfaction with one’s body image. It is often overlooked and, while patients and family seek medical help, emaciation and nutritional misbalances may become extreme and potentially life threatening. Among the many somatic complications, an accumulation of early endocrine adaptations occurs, leading to functional amenorrhea and impaired reproduction as a result of dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis. Even though these conditions are reversible, long-term consequences may affect the fertility of women with AN and can lead to maternal and fetal complications during pregnancy and birth. This review presents the clinical particularities of reproduction in the context of AN, along with the possible pathophysiological mechanisms involved

From ‘productive interactions’ to ‘enabling conditions’:The role of organizations in generating societal impact of academic research

Societal impact of academic research has been high on both policy and scientific agendas for several decades. Scholars increasingly focus on processes when analyzing societal impact, often inspired by the concept of 'productive interactions'. Building on this concept, we assert that processes do not take place in isolation. Rather, we suggest that productive interactions emerge in environments that offer conditions for these interactions to occur. This special section brings together three papers that focus on 'enabling conditions' that organizations provide to enable societal impact