The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has made explicit the burden of care shouldered by academic mothers, in addition to juggling their scholarly commitments. Although discussions are abundant on the impact of caring responsibilities on the careers of women academics, neoliberal academia continues to minimize such struggles. Despite the disruptions to family routines caused by the health crisis, academic institutions have expected academic mothers and fathers to continue undertaking their professional responsibilities at the same level as before, disregarding their parenting demands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately hard impact on refugees and other migrants who are often exposed to the virus with limited means to protect themselves. We tested the hypothesis that during the COVID-19 pandemic, refugees and other migrants have suffered a negative impact on mental health and have been unjustly discriminated for spreading the disease in Europe (data collection from April to November 2020).
Methods: Participants in the ApartTogether Survey (N = 8297, after listwise deletion of missing items final N = 3940) provided data regarding to their difficulties to adhere to preventive recommendations against COVID-19 infection (CARE), self-perceived stigmatization (SS), and psychological distress (PD).
Background: Delivery systems, including peptide-based ones, that destabilize endosomes in a pH-dependent manner are increasingly used to deliver cargoes of therapeutic interest, such as nucleic acids and proteins into mammalian cells.
Methods: The negatively charged amphipathic alpha-helicoidal forming peptide named HELP (Helical Erythrocyte Lysing Peptide) is a derivative from the bee venom melittin and was shown to have a pH-dependent activity with the highest lytic activity at pH 5.0 at the same time as becoming inactive when the pH is increased.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining global health crisis of our time. While the impact of COVID-19, including its mental health impact, is increasingly being documented, there remain important gaps regarding the specific consequences of the pandemic on particular population groups, including refugees and migrants. This study aims to uncover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of refugees and migrants worldwide, disentangling the possible role of social and daily stressors, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInternational migration is shaping and changing urban areas as well as impacting on healthcare access and provision in Europe. To investigate how residents of superdiverse neighborhoods put together their healthcare, we conducted qualitative interviews with 76 healthcare providers and 160 residents in four European cities - Bremen, Germany; Birmingham, UK; Lisbon, Portugal and Uppsala, Sweden, between September 2015 and April 2017. A common theme arising from the data was language and communication obstacles, with both healthcare providers and users experiencing language difficulties, despite all four countries having interpretation policies or guidelines to address language barriers in healthcare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAerobics or strength exercise plus diet interventions have been shown to counteract childhood obesity. However, little is known with regard to periodized multicomponent exercise interventions combined with nutritional counselling, which might be less demanding but more enjoyable and respectful of children and adolescents' nature. In order to analyze the impact of such a multimodal approach, 18 obese children (10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Studies of factors associated with the use of Internet-based health information generally focus on general, rather than migrant populations. This study looked into the reasons why Internet-based health information is used and the effects of migration-related factors, other socio-demographic characteristics and health-related factors on the tendency to consult the Internet.
Methods: In a cross-sectional survey conducted in eight superdiverse neighbourhoods - two each in Birmingham, United Kingdom; Bremen, Germany; Lisbon, Portugal and Uppsala, Sweden - participants were presented with six scenarios and asked to indicate the resources they most relied on when addressing a health concern from a given list.
How people in community settings describe their experience of disappointing health care, and their responses to such dissatisfaction, sheds light on the role of marginalisation and underlines the need for radically responsive service provision. Making the case for studying unprompted accounts of dissatisfaction with healthcare provision, this is an original analysis of 71 semi-structured interviews with healthcare users in superdiverse neighbourhoods in four European cities. Healthcare users spontaneously express disappointment with services that dismiss their concerns and fail to attend to their priorities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Studies of the relationship between diverse populations, healthcare access and health outcomes have been dominated by approaches focusing on ethno-national groups or specific healthcare sectors. Healthcare bricolage conceptualises the processes by which individuals use multiple resources to address health concerns. It is relevant in superdiverse neighbourhoods with complex populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo date little attention has been focused on how the differing features of 'superdiverse' neighbourhoods shape residents' access to healthcare services. Through utilising a cross-national mixed-methods approach, the paper highlights how defining features of superdiverse neighbourhoods - 'newness', 'novelty' and 'diversity' - influence a number of neighbourhood 'domains' and 'rules of access' that regulate access to healthcare. Issues of uncertainty, affordability, compliance, transnationalism and the diversity of community and local sociability are identified as being particularly significant, but which may vary in importance according to the nationality, ethnicity and / or religion of particular individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe use of non- yeast for wine making is becoming a common trend in many innovative wineries. The application is normally aimed at increasing aromas, glycerol, reducing acidity, and other improvements. This manuscript focuses on the reproduction of the native microbiota from the vineyard in the inoculum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives:: analyze gender inequalities among Brazilian women in Portugal and in contemporary nursing based on care politicity in the light of gender; disclose oppression of the female produced by the stereotypes that look upon women as natural caregivers; point out politicity to deconstruct gender stereotypes.
Method:: theoretical reflection with narrative review of literature to analyze classic references in the feminist epistemology combined with the care politicity thesis.
Results:: the similarities between the stereotypes of the Brazilian Eves and the Portuguese Maries as either the sexualized or sanctified nurse are inserted in the Jewish-Christian moral genealogy that reaffirms the subservience of the female to the male.
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a biological firewall that carefully regulates the cerebral microenvironment by acting as a physical, metabolic and transport barrier. This selectively permeable interface was modelled using the immortalised human cerebral microvascular endothelial cell line (hCMEC/D3) to investigate interactions with the cationic amino acid (CAA) L-arginine, the precursor for nitric oxide (NO), and with asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), an endogenously derived analogue of L-arginine that potently inhibits NO production. The transport mechanisms utilised by L-arginine are known but they are not fully understood for ADMA, particularly at the BBB.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate, soil, and grape varieties are the primary characteristics of terroir and lead to the definition of various appellations of origin. However, the microbiota associated with grapes are also affected by these conditions and can leave a footprint in a wine that will be part of the characteristics of terroir. Thus, a description of the yeast microbiota within a vineyard is of interest not only to provide a better understanding of the winemaking process, but also to understand the source of microorganisms that maintain a microbial footprint in wine from the examined vineyard.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough Portugal has been deeply affected by the global financial crisis, the impact of the recession and subsequent austerity on health and to health care has attracted relatively little attention. We used several sources of data including the European Union Statistics for Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) which tracks unmet medical need during the recession and before and after the Troika's austerity package. Our results show that the odds of respondents reporting having an unmet medical need more than doubled between 2010 and 2012 (OR=2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well established that non-Saccharomyces wine yeasts, considered in the past as undesired or spoilage yeasts, can enhance the analytical composition, and aroma profile of the wine. The contribution of non-Saccharomyces yeasts, including the ability to secret enzymes and produce secondary metabolites, glycerol and ethanol, release of mannoproteins or contributions to color stability, is species- and strain-specific, pointing out the key importance of a clever strain selection. The use of mixed starters of selected non-Saccharomyces yeasts with strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae represents an alternative to both spontaneous and inoculated wine fermentations, taking advantage of the potential positive role that non-Saccharomyces wine yeast species play in the organoleptic characteristics of wine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report 5-substituted uridine derivatives as novel, uncharged inhibitors of β-1,4-galactosyltransferase and chemical tools for cellular applications. The new inhibitors reduce P-selectin glycoprotein 1 (PSGL-1) expression in human monocytes. Our results also provide novel insights into a unique mode of glycosyltransferase inhibition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Diversity in Europe has both increased and become more complex posing challenges to both national and local welfare state regimes. Evidence indicates specific barriers for migrant, faith and minority ethnic groups when accessing healthcare. However, previous studies of health in diverse cities in European countries have mainly adopted an ethno-national focus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFβ-Galactosidases from Kluyveromyces lactis and Kluyveromyces marxianus isolated from artisanal ewes' milk cheeses, were used to transgalactosylate lactose from cheese whey permeate (WP). The content of galactooligosaccharides (GOS) obtained by transgalactosylation was comparable with that formed using pure lactose as substrate. In order to obtain a mixture with higher prebiotic oligosaccharide content, isomerisation of the transgalactosylated WP was carried out using sodium aluminate as catalyst.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn human health risk assessment, ingestion of food is considered a major route of exposure to many contaminants, although the total amount of an ingested contaminant (external dose) does not always reflect the quantity available for the body (internal dose). In this study, two in vitro methods were applied to study bioaccessibility and intestinal membrane integrity of cells exposed to patulin, a mycotoxin with significant public health risk. Seven artificially contaminated fruit juices were assayed in the presence or absence of a standard meal, showing a significant difference for bioaccessibility values between contaminated samples alone (mean 27.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study described in this article evaluated sources of contamination of children's food and drinking water in rural households in the highlands of Peru. Samples from children's meals, drinking water, kitchen utensils, and caregivers' and children's hands were analyzed for total coliforms and E. coli counts using Petrifilm EC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe yeasts present during the ripening process of ewes' and goats' cheeses produced in a small traditional dairy in Mediterranean Spain were isolated and identified. Five hundred and thirty strains pertaining to eleven yeast species representing eight genera were identified using molecular methods. Debaryomyces hansenii was the yeast species most frequently isolated in all cheeses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe β-galactosidase activity of 15 Kluyveromyces strains isolated from cheese belonging to Kluyveromyces lactis and Kluyveromyces marxianus species was tested for the production of oligosaccharides derived from lactose (GOS) and lactulose (OsLu). All Kluyveromyces crude cell extracts (CEEs) produced GOS, such as 6-galactobiose and 3'-, 4'-, and 6'-galactosyl-lactose. At 4 h of reaction, the main trisaccharide formed was 6'-galactosyl-lactose (20 g/100 g of total carbohydrates).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHorizontal gene transfer (HGT) involves the nonsexual transmission of genetic material across species boundaries. Although often detected in prokaryotes, examples of HGT involving animals are relatively rare, and any evolutionary advantage conferred to the recipient is typically obscure. We identified a gene (HhMAN1) from the coffee berry borer beetle, Hypothenemus hampei, a devastating pest of coffee, which shows clear evidence of HGT from bacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetabolism by phase II enzymes and transport from intestinal cells back into the lumen by ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters limits the bioavailability of the flavanone hesperetin, the aglycone of hesperidin. This study investigates to what extent other flavonoids modulate the metabolism and transport of hesperetin by characterizing the effect of co-administrating a series of flavonoids using Caco-2 cell monolayers in a two-compartment transwell system. Flavonoids may interfere with hesperetin metabolism and can also inhibit the apically located ABC transporter breast cancer resistance protein (ABCG2) which was previously shown to be responsible for the apical transport of hesperetin metabolites.
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