Agouti Revisited: Transcript Quantification of the ASIP Gene in Bovine Tissues Related to Protein Expression and Localization

Beside its role in melanogenesis, the agouti signaling protein (ASIP) has been related to obesity. The potentially crucial role in adipocyte development makes it a tempting candidate for economic relevant, fat related traits in farm animals. The objective of our study was to characterize the mRNA expression of different ASIP transcripts and of putative targets in different bovine tissues, as well as to study consequences on protein abundance and localization. ASIP mRNA abundance was determined by RT-qPCR in adipose and further tissues of cattle representing different breeds and crosses. ASIP mRNA was up-regulated more than 9-fold in intramuscular fat of Japanese Black cattle compared to Holstein (p<0.001). Further analyses revealed that a transposon-derived transcript was solely responsible for the increased ASIP mRNA abundance. This transcript was observed in single individuals of different breeds indicating a wide spread occurrence of this insertion at the ASIP locus in cattle. The protein was detected in different adipose tissues, skin, lung and liver, but not in skeletal muscle by Western blot with a bovine-specific ASIP antibody. However, the protein abundance was not related to the observed ASIP mRNA over-expression. Immuno-histochemical analyses revealed a putative nuclear localization of ASIP additionally to the expected cytosolic signal in different cell types. The expression of melanocortin receptors (MCR) 1 to 5 as potential targets for ASIP was analyzed by RT-PCR in subcutaneous fat. Only MC1R and MC4R were detected indicating a similar receptor expression like in human adipose tissue. Our results provide evidence for a widespread expression of ASIP in bovine tissues at mRNA and, for the first time, at protein level. ASIP protein is detectable in adipocytes as well as in further cells of adipose tissue. We generated a basis for a more detailed investigation of ASIP function in peripheral tissues of various mammalian species

Process and impact evaluation of the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy Health Impact Assessment

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>despite health impact assessment (HIA) being increasingly widely used internationally, fundamental questions about its impact on decision-making, implementation and practices remain. In 2005 a collaboration between public health and local government authorities performed an HIA on the Christchurch Urban Development Strategy Options paper in New Zealand. The findings of this were incorporated into the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy;</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>using multiple qualitative methodologies including key informant interviews, focus groups and questionnaires, this study performs process and impact evaluations of the Christchurch HIA including evaluation of costs and resource use;</p> <p>Results</p> <p>the evaluation found that the HIA had demonstrable direct impacts on planning and implementation of the final Urban Development Strategy as well as indirect impacts on understandings and ways of working within and between organisations. It also points out future directions and ways of working in this successful collaboration between public health and local government authorities. It summarises the modest resource use and discusses the important role HIA can play in urban planning with intersectoral collaboration and enhanced relationships as both catalysts and outcomes of the HIA process;</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>as one of the few evaluations of HIA that have been published to date, this paper makes a substantial contribution to the literature on the impact, utility and effectiveness of HIA.</p

Integration in primary community care networks (PCCNs): examination of governance, clinical, marketing, financial, and information infrastructures in a national demonstration project in Taiwan

Background. Taiwan's primary community care network (PCCN) demonstration project, funded by the Bureau of National Health Insurance on March 2003, was established to discourage hospital shopping behavior of people and drive the traditional fragmented health care providers into cooperate care models. Between 2003 and 2005, 268 PCCNs were established. This study profiled the individual members in the PCCNs to study the nature and extent to which their network infrastructures have been integrated among the members (clinics and hospitals) within individual PCCNs. Methods. The thorough questionnaire items, covering the network working infrastructures - governance, clinical, marketing, financial, and information integration in PCCNs, were developed with validity and reliability confirmed. One thousand five hundred and fifty-seven clinics that had belonged to PCCNs for more than one year, based on the 2003-2005 Taiwan Primary Community Care Network List, were surveyed by mail. Nine hundred and twenty-eight clinic members responded to the surveys giving a 59.6 % response rate. Results. Overall, the PCCNs' members had higher involvement in the governance infrastructure, which was usually viewed as the most important for establishment of core values in PCCNs' organization design and management at the early integration stage. In addition, it found that there existed a higher extent of integration of clinical, marketing, and information infrastructures among the hospital-clinic member relationship than those among clinic members within individual PCCNs. The financial infrastructure was shown the least integrated relative to other functional infrastructures at the early stage of PCCN formation. Conclusion. There was still room for better integrated partnerships, as evidenced by the great variety of relationships and differences in extent of integration in this study. In addition to provide how the network members have done for their initial work at the early stage of network forming in this study, the detailed surveyed items, the concepts proposed by the managerial and theoretical professionals, could be a guide for those health care providers who have willingness to turn their business into multi-organizations. © 2007 Lin; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.published_or_final_versio

Healthy cities and sustainable innovation

In this chapter, the conceptualization of healthy city including its characteristics and societal benefits are discussed. To build and sustain healthy cities, a well-established approach found in literature is reviewed. Furthermore, more recent literature has been calling for more effective city-level systems to deal with constant and fast-changing city health conditions as city-immigration is hitting global record high and thus the challenge is ever more difficult. A particularly debated area is the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on health of cities of host countries. Recent emerging trend identifiable in recent literature is the seeking and promotion of building technologically-smart and resource-sustainable cities. The chapter concludes by highlighting some important future considerations for public policy bodies

Active City for Healthy Ageing and Anti-globesity

Health and urban space are two realities that need to progress in close connection; in fact, there is an increasing interest in identifying the links between architecture and public health and how urban design can positively influence the latter. A vision able to reconstruct a profitable reconnection between health, urban planning and environmental planning in line with current evidence and research on the cultural and organizational transition from Public Health to Urban Health is required. The research topic addresses the importance and the centrality of the User-Centred approach in the observation of the relationships established between man, technological systems and the constructed environment, identifying design strategies that guarantee the conditions of physical, mental and social well-being

The Role of Active Mobility for the Promotion of Urban Health

In the debate on the issue of designing spaces for ‘slow’ urban mobility, this paper emphasizes the importance and centrality of the human-centered approach through the observation of the relations that are established among people, technological systems and constructed environments in order to design according to anatomical and metric needs (anthropometric view) as well as to the needs linked with perception and cognitive processes (anthropocentric view). Two levels of interface in the person-system relationship have been identified, the “individual space”, where internal variables impact the “user system” (factors related to the psycho-physiological perception of space), and the “prosthetic space”, where external variables influence the “environment system” (factors that influence the capability of the architectural space to become physiologically and behaviorally prosthetic)

Do healthy cities work? A logic of method for assessing impact and outcome of healthy cities

In this article, we discuss an appropriate methodology for assessing complex urban programs such as the WHO European Healthy Cities Network. The basic tenets and parameters for this project are reviewed, and situated in the broader urban health tradition. This leads to a delineation of the types of questions researchers can address when looking at a complex urban health program. Such questions reach appropriately beyond traditional public health concepts involving proximal and distal determinants of health (and associated upstream, midstream, and downstream rhetoric). Espousing a multi-level, reciprocal pathways perspective on Healthy Cities research, we also adopt a distinction between impacts and outcomes of Healthy Cities. The former are value driven, the latter intervention-driven. These approaches lead to the acknowledgment of a logic of method that includes situational and contextual appreciation of unique Healthy City experiences in a Realist Evaluation paradigm. The article concludes with a reflection of evaluation and assessment procedures applied to Phase IV (2003-2008) of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network and an interpretation of response rates to the range of methods that have been adopted.<br /