Pediatric non alcoholic fatty liver disease: old and new concepts on development, progression, metabolic insight and potential treatment targets

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the leading cause of chronic liver disease in children. NAFLD has emerged to be extremely prevalent, and predicted by obesity and male gender. It is defined by hepatic fat infiltration >5% hepatocytes, in the absence of other causes of liver pathology. It includes a spectrum of disease ranging from intrahepatic fat accumulation (steatosis) to various degrees of necrotic inflammation and fibrosis (non-alcoholic steatohepatatis [NASH]). NAFLD is associated, in children as in adults, with severe metabolic impairments, determining an increased risk of developing the metabolic syndrome. It can evolve to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, with the consequent need for liver transplantation. Both genetic and environmental factors seem to be involved in the development and progression of the disease, but its physiopathology is not yet entirely clear. In view of this mounting epidemic phenomenon involving the youth, the study of NAFLD should be a priority for all health care systems. This review provides an overview of current and new clinical-histological concepts of pediatric NAFLD, going through possible implications into patho-physiolocical and therapeutic perspectives

The politics of collective repair: examining object-relations in a postwork society

In this article we look at repair as an emergent focus of recent activism in affluent societies, where a number of groups are reclaiming practices of repair as a form of political and ecological action. Ranging from those that fight for legislative change to those groups who are trying to support ecological and social change through everyday life practices, repair is beginning to surface tensions in everyday life and as such poses opportunities for its transformation. We survey a few of the practices that make up this movement in its various articulations, to take stock of their current political import. While we suggest that these practices can be seen as an emergent lifestyle movement, they should not be seen as presenting a unified statement. Rather, we aim to show that they articulate a spectrum of political positions, particularly in relation to the three specific issues of property, pedagogy and sociality. These three dimensions are all facets of current internal discrepancies of repair practices and moreover express potential bifurcations as this movement evolves. Drawing on a diverse methodology that includes discourse analysis and participant observation, we suggest some of the ways in which this growing area of activity could play a significant role in resisting the commodification of the everyday and inventing postwork alternatives

Repair matters

Special Issue Call for Paper: This special issue of ephemera aims to investigate contemporary practices of repair as an emergent focus of recent organizing at the intersection of politics, ecology and economy. We wish to explore notions of repair and maintenance as crucial components for redefining socio-political imaginaries, away from the neoliberal capitalist dogma of throw-away culture and planned obsolescence

A chain rule formula in BV and applications to conservation laws

In this paper we prove a new chain rule formula for the distributional derivative of the composite function $v(x)=B(x,u(x))$, where $u:]a,b[\to\R^d$ has bounded variation, $B(x,\cdot)$ is continuously differentiable and $B(\cdot,u)$ has bounded variation. We propose an application of this formula in order to deal in an intrinsic way with the discontinuous flux appearing in conservation laws in one space variable.Comment: 26 page

The politics of commoning and designing

This theme aims to bring together practitioners, activists and researchers to explore the tensions and potentialities around commoning in design and the (re)production of ‘community economies’. As De Angelis (2007) and others point out, commons are today thought as the basis on which to build social justice, environmental sustainability and a good life for all. But they, just as ‘community economies’ (J.K. Gibson-Graham and Roelvink, 2011), operate within a world dominated by capital’s priorities and are thus also sites of struggle as well as targets of co-optation and enclosure

The educational turn in art: rewriting the hidden curriculum

Around 2006, the art world developed a prolonged fascination with questions of education, pedagogy and the art school. ‘The Educational Turn’ (Rogoff, 2008) as it became known, produced a plethora of artistic and curatorial practices that engage with educational paradigms and problematics. Prompted in part by the European Union Bologna Process, the Educational Turn provided a critique of education as one-directional knowledge transfer, and the framing of education as a commercialised industry, reduced to the utilitarianism of training for working life. At the same time, it established ‘education’ as a thematic for the art world, in most cases divorced from its capacity for producing change in the fields of art or education. This article asks, what is the hidden curriculum (Illich) of this Educational Turn? Drawing from the writings of Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck and Paulo Virno among others, it suggests that such ‘turns’ without a vital link to the realm of action, contribute to the broader problematic of public programming without a public sphere, through which formerly democratic institutions (like art galleries) operate as shells in a capitalist environment that is increasingly incompatible with democracy. We read The Education Turn here as a missed opportunity to re-shape art curricula and institutions, to develop a movement to oppose the Bologna Accord and the brutal changes imposed on art education through austerity politics. Finally, we argue - citing the writings of Paulo Friere, the mutualist movements in Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, the educational experiments of Celestin Freinet in and Fernand Oury in France in the 1950s and the pedagogies of feminist and post-colonial struggle - for a deeper connection to radical education genealogies and their contemporary counterparts in contemporary public programming today

Passion without Objects. Young Graduates and the Politics of Temporary Art Spaces

This paper addresses the position of young arts graduates seeking to respond to the unequal access and precarity of jobs in the cultural sector by establishing artist-led temporary spaces. With the increasing dissemination of the discourse of pop-up urban uses in the United Kingdom since 2008, former genealogies of autonomous self-organised spaces intersect with the urban agendas of public commissioners and private actors. Following a long-established critique of the “creative industries” and recent studies of working conditions in the sector, this paper brings together critical textual analysis of specialized press and policy documents and a series of in-depth interviews with a young arts graduate collective involved in setting up a pop-up space in London. Our research shows how in the context of low-budget public commissions in affluent areas of central London artists are encouraged to translate their passion for autonomous, self-organised practice into dominant discourses of artistic “community provision” and place marketing

<b><i>Topoisomerase 1</i></b> Promoter Variants and Benefit from Irinotecan in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients

Objective: Topoisomerase 1 (topo-1) is an important target for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the correlation between topo-1 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and clinical outcome in metastatic CRC (mCRC) patients. Methods: With the use of specific software (PROMO 3.0), we performed an in silico analysis of topo-1 promoter SNPs; the rs6072249 and rs34282819 SNPs were included in the study. DNA was extracted from 105 mCRC patients treated with FOLFIRI ± bevacizumab in the first line. SNP genotyping was performed by real-time PCR. Genotypes were correlated with clinical parameters (objective response rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival). Results: No single genotype was significantly associated with clinical variables. The G allelic variant of rs6072249 topo-1 SNP is responsible for GC factor and X-box-binding protein transcription factor binding. The same allelic variant showed a nonsignificant trend toward a shorter progression-free survival (GG, 7.5 months; other genotypes, 9.3 months; HR 1.823, 95% CI 0.8904-3.734; p = 0.1). Conclusion: Further analyses are needed to confirm that the topo-1 SNP rs6072249 and transcription factor interaction could be a part of tools to predict clinical outcome in mCRC patients treated with irinotecan-based regimens