The recipe for Happiness: A critical review - introduction to a new theoretical model and a new psychometric tool for the measurement of Eudemonia

Αυτή η συστηματική επισκόπηση επικεντρώνεται α) στην μέχρι σήμερα επιστημονική γνώση σχετικά με την Ευτυχία και β) στην διαδικασία δημιουργίας ενός νέου πρωτότυπου ψυχομετρικού εργαλείου για τη μέτρηση της. Για τον σκοπό   αυτό προτείνεται ένα νέο μοντέλο για την επιδίωξη και την αύξηση της Ευτυχίας υπό τον τίτλο «Μοντέλο Ψυχολογικής Ισορροπίας» (ΜΨΙ). Το Μοντέλο Ψυχολογικής Ισορροπίας (ΜΨΙ) στοχεύει στο να εξερευνήσει τους βασικούς παράγοντες Ευτυχίας και να συμβάλει σε μια πιο συνθετική προσέγγιση της έννοιας. Σύμφωνα με αυτό το μοντέλο η Ευτυχία ορίζεται ως το ψυχολογικό αποτέλεσμα αέναης ανάπτυξης σε τέσσερις τομείς. Συγκεκριμένα, αν το άτομο βιώνει α) υψηλά επίπεδα αυταξίας – αυτοαποδοχής, β) θετικές σχέσεις με την οικογένεια του και γ) τους φίλους του και δ) βρίσκεται σε διαδικασία επιδίωξης υψηλών στόχων για το μέλλον, τότε θα είναι σε θέση να κατακτήσει υψηλά επίπεδα ευτυχίας. Ο κύριος στόχος αυτού του νέου μοντέλου είναι να βασίσει την ευτυχία στην αξιολόγηση αντικειμενικά μετρήσιμων παραγόντων και προσωπικών χαρακτηριστικών, σε αντιδιαστολή με την απλή υποκειμενική αντίληψη – αυτοαναφορά που έχει κυριαρχήσει μέχρι σήμερα για την μέτρηση της. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο μπορούμε να οδηγηθούμε στην ανάπτυξη ενός νέου αντικειμενικού τρόπου μέτρησης του βαθμού ευτυχίας συνδυάζοντας τις επιμέρους μετρήσεις των διαστάσεων του Μοντέλου Ψυχολογικής Ισορροπίας (ΜΨΙ). Απώτερος στόχος μας είναι η προσέγγιση της ευτυχίας με έναν νέο πιο ολιστικό και κατανοητό τρόπο.This critical review refers (a) to all scientific knowledge to date on the subject of Happiness and (b) to the creation of a new prototype psychometric tool, for its measurement. A new model for the development and increase of happiness levels, the Psychological Equilibrium Model (PEM), is proposed. The Psychological Equilibrium Model (PEM) aims to examine the factors of Happiness and contribute to a more comprehensive approach of the concept. According to the Psychological Equilibrium Model (PEM), Happiness is defined as the psychological result of growth in four areas. In particular, if a person experiences (a) high levels of self-acceptance, (b) positive relationships with family and (c) friends, and (d) is able to set goals and plans for the future, he or she will experience higher levels of Happiness. The main objective of this new model is to measure the objective factors and personal characteristics that make it easier for people to achieve and maintain optimal happiness. This may lead to the creation of a new psychometric tool for the objective measurement of happiness based on the Psychological Equilibrium Model. The purpose of the article is to help define the notion of Happiness in a new more comprehensive and holistic way

Life-course social participation and physical activity in midlife: longitudinal associations in the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)

A hypothesized benefit of social participation is that it encourages people to be more physically active. However, limited evidence exists on the association between social participation over the life-course and physical activity in midlife. We sought to apply a life-course framework to examine the association of social participation and device measured physical activity in midlife in the UK. We used the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study (BCS70), which includes all people born in Britain during a single week in 1970. Social participation was assessed at ages 16, 30, 34 and 42. Physical activity was measured by accelerometery at age 46, as mean daily step count and time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). The associations of social participation and physical activity were tested using two different life-course models: the sensitive period model and the accumulation model. Individuals with medium and high participation compared to no social participation over their life-course had higher mean daily step count and MVPA in midlife, supporting the accumulation model. In the sensitive period model, only those that actively participated at age 42 had higher mean daily steps and MVPA compared to those who did not participate. Our study provides empirical evidence on the importance of sustaining social participation at all ages over the life-course rather than at a particular timepoint of someone’s life. If our findings reflect causal effects, interventions to promote social participation throughout the life-course could be an avenue to promote physical activity in middle life

Synergy-driven performance enhancement of vision-based 3D hand pose reconstruction

In this work we propose, for the first time, to improve the performance of a Hand Pose Reconstruction (HPR) technique from RGBD camera data, which is affected by self-occlusions, leveraging upon postural synergy information, i.e., a priori information on how human most commonly use and shape their hands in everyday life tasks. More specifically, in our approach, we ignore joint angle values estimated with low confidence through a vision-based HPR technique and fuse synergistic information with such incomplete measures. Preliminary experiments are reported showing the effectiveness of the proposed integration

Bone metabolism in Langerhans cell histiocytosis

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare disease of not well-defined etiology that involves immune cell activation and frequently affects the skeleton. Bone involvement in LCH usually presents in the form of osteolytic lesions along with low bone mineral density. Various molecules involved in bone metabolism are implicated in the pathogenesis of LCH or may be affected during the course of the disease, including interleukins (ILs), tumor necrosis factor α, receptor activator of NF-κB (RANK) and its soluble ligand RANKL, osteoprotegerin (OPG), periostin and sclerostin. Among them IL-17A, periostin and RANKL have been proposed as potential serum biomarkers for LCH, particularly as the interaction between RANK, RANKL and OPG not only regulates bone homeostasis through its effects on the osteoclasts but also affects the activation and survival of immune cells. Significant changes in circulating and lesional RANKL levels have been observed in LCH patients irrespective of bone involvement. Standard LCH management includes local or systematic administration of corticosteroids and chemotherapy. Given the implication of RANK, RANKL and OPG in the pathogenesis of the disease and the osteolytic nature of bone lesions, agents aiming at inhibiting the RANKL pathway and/or osteoclastic activation, such as bisphosphonates and denosumab, may have a role in the therapeutic approach of LCH although further clinical investigation is warranted

Association between progestin-only contraceptive use and cardiometabolic outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aims The association between progestin-only contraceptive (POC) use and the risk of various cardiometabolic outcomes has rarely been studied. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the impact of POC use on cardiometabolic outcomes including venous thromboembolism, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension and diabetes. Methods and results Nineteen observational studies (seven cohort and 12 case-control) were included in this systematic review. Of those, nine studies reported the risk of venous thromboembolism, six reported the risk of myocardial infarction, six reported the risk of stroke, three reported the risk of hypertension and two studies reported the risk of developing diabetes with POC use. The pooled adjusted relative risks (RRs) for venous thromboembolism, myocardial infarction and stroke for oral POC users versus non-users based on the random effects model were 1.06 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.70-1.62), 0.98 (95% CI 0.66-1.47) and 1.02 (95% CI 0.72-1.44), respectively. Stratified analysis by route of administration showed that injectable POC with a RR of 2.62 (95% CI 1.74-3.94), but not oral POCs (RR 1.06, 95% CI 0.7-1.62), was associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism. A decreased risk of venous thromboembolism in a subgroup of women using an intrauterine levonorgestrel device was observed with a RR of 0.53 (95% CI 0.32-0.89). No effect of POC use on blood pressure was found, but there was an indication for an increased risk of diabetes with injectable POCs, albeit non-significant. Conclusions This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that oral POC use is not associated with an increased risk of developing various cardiometabolic outcomes, whereas injectable POC use might increase the risk of venous thromboembolism

H-GAN: the power of GANs in your Hands

We present HandGAN (H-GAN), a cycle-consistent adversarial learning approach implementing multi-scale perceptual discriminators. It is designed to translate synthetic images of hands to the real domain. Synthetic hands provide complete ground-truth annotations, yet they are not representative of the target distribution of real-world data. We strive to provide the perfect blend of a realistic hand appearance with synthetic annotations. Relying on image-to-image translation, we improve the appearance of synthetic hands to approximate the statistical distribution underlying a collection of real images of hands. H-GAN tackles not only the cross-domain tone mapping but also structural differences in localized areas such as shading discontinuities. Results are evaluated on a qualitative and quantitative basis improving previous works. Furthermore, we relied on the hand classification task to claim our generated hands are statistically similar to the real domain of hand.Spanish Government PID2019-104818RB-I00 grant for the MoDeaAS project, supported with Feder funds. This work has also been supported by two Spanish national grants for PhD studies, FPU17/00166, and ACIF/2018/197 respectively

Disruption of MEF2C signaling and loss of sarcomeric and mitochondrial integrity in cancer-induced skeletal muscle wasting

Cancer cachexia is a highly debilitating paraneoplastic disease observed in more than 50% of patients with advanced cancers and directly contributes to 20% of cancer deaths. Loss of skeletal muscle is a defining characteristic of patients with cancer cachexia and is associated with poor survival. The present study reveals the involvement of a myogenic transcription factor Myocyte Enhancer Factor (MEF) 2C in cancer-induced skeletal muscle wasting. Increased skeletal muscle mRNA expression of Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling (Socs) 3 and the IL-6 receptor indicative of active IL-6 signaling was seen in skeletal muscle of mice bearing the Colon 26 (C26) carcinoma. Loss of skeletal muscle structural integrity and distorted mitochondria were also observed using electron microscopy. Gene and protein expression of MEF2C was significantly downregulated in skeletal muscle from C26-bearing mice. MEF2C gene targets myozenin and myoglobin as well as myokinase were also altered during cachexia, suggesting dysregulated oxygen transport capacity and ATP regeneration in addition to distorted structural integrity. In addition, reduced expression of calcineurin was observed which suggested a potential pathway of MEF2C dysregulation. Together, these effects may limit sarcomeric contractile ability and also predispose skeletal muscle to structural instability; associated with muscle wasting and fatigue in cachexia