Validation of the Italian Versions of the Flourishing Scale and of the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience

Researchers are divided between those who consider well-being as a single global construct and those who maintain the need to keep the hedonic and eudaimonic components of well-being separate. Diener et al. proposed two separate scales for measuring well-being: the Flourishing Scale (FS) for eudaimonic well-being and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) for hedonic well-being. The aim of this article is to validate the Italian versions of the FS and SPANE, and to provide support for the usefulness of distinct measures of well-being components. In Study 1, we examined an Italian undergraduate student sample ( n = 684), whereas in Study 2 we considered two samples of unemployed ( n = 282) and healthy control individuals ( n = 426). Through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the Italian FS and SPANE obtained strict measurement invariance across administration methods (paper-and-pencil and Internet) and strong measurement invariance across different groups (unemployed individuals seeking work and a healthy control group). In our data, we found a superior fit for a two-factor model over a one-factor model of well-being, which suggests the utility of separate measures of well-being components. Concurrent validity was verified with other well-being, depression, and anxiety measures. Furthermore, we showed that flourishing is more strongly related to the cognitive component of subjective well-being than hedonic affect. In summary, the Italian FS and SPANE are reliable and valid instruments, and may be beneficial in their applications in future Italian studies on well-being

Validation of the Italian Versions of the Flourishing Scale and of the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience

Researchers are divided between those who consider well-being as a single global construct and those who maintain the need to keep the hedonic and eudaimonic components of well-being separate. Diener et al. proposed two separate scales for measuring well-being: the Flourishing Scale (FS) for eudaimonic well-being and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) for hedonic well-being. The aim of this article is to validate the Italian versions of the FS and SPANE, and to provide support for the usefulness of distinct measures of well-being components. In Study 1, we examined an Italian undergraduate student sample ( n = 684), whereas in Study 2 we considered two samples of unemployed ( n = 282) and healthy control individuals ( n = 426). Through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the Italian FS and SPANE obtained strict measurement invariance across administration methods (paper-and-pencil and Internet) and strong measurement invariance across different groups (unemployed individuals seeking work and a healthy control group). In our data, we found a superior fit for a two-factor model over a one-factor model of well-being, which suggests the utility of separate measures of well-being components. Concurrent validity was verified with other well-being, depression, and anxiety measures. Furthermore, we showed that flourishing is more strongly related to the cognitive component of subjective well-being than hedonic affect. In summary, the Italian FS and SPANE are reliable and valid instruments, and may be beneficial in their applications in future Italian studies on well-being

The Relevance of Assessing Subjective Experiences of Skin Toxicity During Adjuvant Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer

Purpose: Radiodermatitis is likely to be an inevitable side effect of radiotherapy (RT) but experiencing pain relief during RT might contribute making treatment more acceptable and less impairing. The current study aimed to assess the subjective perceptions and experiences of skin toxicity in a sample of women undergoing adjuvant RT for breast cancer. Methods: Eighty patients were randomly assigned to one out of two groups: treatment (i.e., a newly developed topical product) and control (i.e., standard-of-care). Patients underwent adjuvant RT for 3 weeks. Clinical assessment of radiodermatitis and self-reported levels of pain, relief, and perceptions of treatment response were collected at the initiation of RT (T1), during RT (T2 and T3), and 2 weeks after treatment completion (T4). To assess changes in skin-related QoL, a subgroup of patients completed the Padua Skin-Related QoL questionnaire at T0 (before the initiation of RT) and at T4. Results: A comparable timing of onset and severity of radiodermatitis during treatment was observed in both groups. The treatment group reported lower levels of pain and higher levels of relief compared to the control group when skin toxicity was at its highest levels (T2 and T3). Independent of the group, levels of perceived improvements in clinical status increased over time, whereas skin-related QoL worsened from T0 to T4. Conclusion: Current findings outline the relevance of integrating clinical evaluations of radiodermatitis with patients\u2019 subjective experiences of skin toxicity in interventional studies. Moreover, they provide preliminary evidence about the soothing effect of a newly developed topical product, thus supporting its usefulness of as a supportive care

Definition of input data to assess GHG default emissions from biofuels in EU legislation

Directive EU 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources has been officially ratified in December 2018 for the post-2020 framework. It is a new iteration of the Renewable Energy Directive RED, the so-called ‘recast’, work on which began in 2016. The Directive fixes a minimum requirement for greenhouse gas (GHG) savings for biofuels and bioliquids for the period from 2021 to 2030, and sets the rules for calculating the greenhouse impact of biofuels, bioliquids and their fossil fuels comparators. To help economic operators to declare the GHG emission savings of their products, default and typical values for a number of specific pathways are listed in the annexes of the RED-recast (Annex V). The EC Joint Research Center (JRC) is in charge of defining input values to be used for the calculation of default GHG emissions for biofuels, bioliquids, solid and gaseous biomass pathways. An update of the GHG emissions in Annex V has been carried out for the new Directive on the Promotion of the Use of Energy from Renewable Sources (Directive 2018/2001), for the post-2020 framework. This report describes the assumptions made by the JRC when compiling the new updated data set used to calculate default and typical GHG emissions for the different biofuels pathways as proposed in the new directive.JRC.C.2-Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Acquisition of hypoxia inducibility by oxygen sensing N-terminal cysteine oxidase in spermatophytes

N-terminal cysteine oxidases (NCOs) use molecular oxygen to oxidise the amino-terminal cysteine of specific proteins, thereby initiating the proteolytic N-degron pathway. To expand the characterisation of the plant family of NCOs (plant cysteine oxidases [PCOs]), we performed a phylogenetic analysis across different taxa in terms of sequence similarity and transcriptional regulation. Based on this survey, we propose a distinction of PCOs into two main groups. A-type PCOs are conserved across all plant species and are generally unaffected at the messenger RNA level by oxygen availability. Instead, B-type PCOs appeared in spermatophytes to acquire transcriptional regulation in response to hypoxia. The inactivation of two A-type PCOs in Arabidopsis thaliana, PCO4 and PCO5, is sufficient to activate the anaerobic response in young seedlings, whereas the additional removal of B-type PCOs leads to a stronger induction of anaerobic genes and impairs plant growth and development. Our results show that both PCO types are required to regulate the anaerobic response in angiosperms. Therefore, while it is possible to distinguish two clades within the PCO family, we conclude that they all contribute to restrain the anaerobic transcriptional programme in normoxic conditions and together generate a molecular switch to toggle the hypoxic response

Measuring Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression: Further Evidence on the Factorial and Predictive Validity of Negative Cognitive Style

Background and objectives: Previous research has provided insufficient evidence on the factorial validity of the negative cognitive style questionnaires, which is a problem for the validity of the total score\u2019s computation. In Study 1, we focused on the relationship between internality and the other dimensions of negative cognitive style. In Study 2, we explored the predictive validity of negative cognitive style for negative interpretation bias. Methods: In Study 1, 770 participants completed the Cognitive Style Questionnaire \u2013 Short Form (CSQ-SF). In Study 2, from a prescreening data collection (N = 300) we selected participants with low (N = 40) and high (N = 32) cognitive vulnerability to depression who were primed with negative mood induction and who completed a generative interpretation task. Results: In Study 1, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that the best fitting model for the CSQ-SF was a bifactor model without the internality dimension. In Study 2, a CFA replicated the factorial structure of Study 1 and individuals with a high negative cognitive style exhibited a negative interpretation bias after controlling for depressive symptoms. Limitations: The university-age sample limited the generalizability of our results to different populations, and the lack of longitudinal data prevented us from discussing further implications on the relationship between the negative interpretation bias and negative cognitive style in predicting depression. Conclusions: Together, the results of our two studies support the construct validity of the CSQ-SF and recommend the use of a composite score of negative cognitive style without internality

A Ratiometric Sensor Based on Plant N-Terminal Degrons Able to Report Oxygen Dynamics in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The ability to perceive oxygen levels is crucial to many organisms because it allows discerning environments compatible with aerobic or anaerobic metabolism, as well as enabling rapid switch between these two energy strategies. Organisms from different taxa dedicate distinct mechanisms to associate oxygen fluctuations with biological responses. Following from this observation, we speculated that orthogonal oxygen sensing devices can be created by transfer of essential modules from one species to another in which they are not conserved. We expressed plant cysteine oxidase (PCOs) enzymes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to confer oxygen-conditional degradability to a bioluminescent protein tagged with the Cys-exposing N-degron typical of plant ERF-VII factors. Co-translation of a second luciferase protein, not subjected to oxygen-dependent proteolysis, made the resulting Double Luciferase Oxygen Reporter (DLOR) ratiometric. We show that DLOR acts as a proxy for oxygen dynamics in yeast cultures. Moreover, since DLOR activity was enabled by the PCO sensors, we employed this device to disclose some of their properties, such as the dispensability of nitric oxide for N-terminal cysteine oxidation and the individual performance of Arabidopsis PCO isoforms in vivo. In the future, we propose the synthetic DLOR device as a convenient, eukaryotic cell-based tool to easily screen substrates and inhibitors of cysteine oxidase enzymes in vivo. Replacement of the luminescent proteins with fluorescent proteins will further turn our system into a visual reporter for oxygen dynamics in living cells