Public mobilisation is needed to enact obesity-prevention policies and to mitigate reaction against their implementation. However, approaches in public health focus mainly on dialogue between public health professionals and political leaders. Strategies to increase popular demand for obesity-prevention policies include refinement and streamlining of public information, identification of effective obesity frames for each population, strengthening of media advocacy, building of citizen protest and engagement, and development of a receptive political environment with change agents embedded across organisations and sectors. Long-term support and investment in collaboration between diverse stakeholders to create shared value is also important. Each actor in an expanded coalition for obesity prevention can make specific contributions to engaging, mobilising, and coalescing the public. The shift from a top-down to a combined and integrated bottom-up and top-down approach would need an overhaul of current strategies and reprioritisation of resources.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the sporting field, with athletes constrained in home isolation without the possibility to train and compete in their usual environments. This situation has been investigated within the theoretical frameworks of athletic identity and cognitive emotion regulation.
Objectives
The objectives of our investigation were to: (a) validate the athletic identity measurement scale (AIMS) for use in Italian language; and (b) explore differences by gender, typology of sport (individual vs. team), and competitive level (elite vs. non-elite) in athletic identity and in cognitive emotion regulation during the Covid-19 lockdown period.
Methods
To achieve these objectives, the reliability and construct validity of the Italian version of the AIMS have been tested in Study 1. Multivariate and univariate analyses were run to evaluate differences between different groups of athletes in Study 2.
Results
Results from Study 1 suggest a 3-factor higher order model of athletic identity. Results from Study 2 highlight that, during this lockdown period, elite athletes and team sports athletes show higher athletic identity. Cognitive emotion regulation strategies are different for gender and for competitive level. Finally, athletes with higher athletic identity tend to ruminate and catastrophize more.
Conclusions
The present multi-study paper contributes to the theoretical field with a validated measure of athletic identity in Italian language. It also provides some practical implications that could apply in this situation of isolation and can be extended to cases such as those of injury or illness.
Variation of the magnitude of posterior alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) has functional and behavioural effects in sensory processing and cognitive performances. Electrical brain activity, as revealed by electroencephalography (EEG), can be represented by a sequence of microstates of about 40-120 ms duration, in which distributed neural pools are synchronously active and generate stable spatial potential topographies on the scalp. Microstate dynamics may reflect transitions between global states characterized by selective inhibition of specific intra-cortical regions, mediated by alpha activity. We investigated the intra-subject and inter-subject relationship between microstate features and alpha band. High-density EEG signals were acquired in 29 healthy subjects during ten minutes of eyes closed rest. Individual EEG signal epochs were classified into four groups depending on the amount of occipital alpha power, and microstate metrics (duration, coverage and frequency of occurrence) were calculated and compared across groups. Correlations between alpha power and microstate metrics between individuals were also performed. To assess if microstate parameter variations are specific for the alpha band, the same analysis was also performed for theta and beta bands, as well as for global field power. We observed an increase in the metrics of microstate, previously associated to the visual system, with the level of intra-subject amplitude alpha oscillations, together with lower coverage of microstate associated with executive attention network and a higher frequency of microstate associated with task negative network. Other modulation effects of broad-band EEG power level on microstate metrics were observed. These effects are not specific for the alpha band, since they can equally be attributed to fluctuations in other frequency bands. We can interpret our results as a regulation mechanism mediated by posterior alpha level, dynamically interacting with other frequency bands, responsible for the switching between active areas.The dynamics of human brain signals uncover organized fluctuations both at rest and during task or sensory input. Such time signal variability has been recently linked to the efficiency of functional abilities and directly associated to cognitive performances in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Magnetoencephalographic (MEG), Electrocorticographic (ECoG) and Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies (for a review see Buzsáki and colleagues 1 ).Alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) is a prominent component of the spectral content of electrical brain signals, as recorded at the scalp surface by EEG or MEG 2 . Although the parieto-occipital alpha rhythm has been supposed for years to reflect an idle status, it is currently considered to play a crucial role in higher cognitive processes and memory performances and to have a functional significance even at rest 3,4 . Specifically, perception and other ongoing neural activities have been related to alpha rhythm modulation 5 . In this regards, Hanslmayr 6 hypothesised that ...
Objective. To assess quality of care of women with severe maternal morbidity and to identify associated factors. Method. This is a national multicenter cross-sectional study performing surveillance for severe maternal morbidity, using the World Health Organization criteria. The expected number of maternal deaths was calculated with the maternal severity index (MSI) based on the severity of complication, and the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) for each center was estimated. Analyses on the adequacy of care were performed. Results. 17 hospitals were classified as providing adequate and 10 as nonadequate care. Besides almost twofold increase in maternal mortality ratio, the main factors associated with nonadequate performance were geographic difficulty in accessing health services (P < 0.001), delays related to quality of medical care (P = 0.012), absence of blood derivatives (P = 0.013), difficulties of communication between health services (P = 0.004), and any delay during the whole process (P = 0.039). Conclusions. This is an example of how evaluation of the performance of health services is possible, using a benchmarking tool specific to Obstetrics. In this study the MSI was a useful tool for identifying differences in maternal mortality ratios and factors associated with nonadequate performance of care.
We present the seafloor morphology and shallow seismic structure of the continental slope south-east of the Balearic promontory and of the adjacent Algero-Balearic abyssal plain from multibeam and chirp sonar data. The main purpose of this research was to identify the sediment pathways from the Balearic promontory to the Algero-Balearic deep basin from the Early Pliocene to the Present. The morphology of the southern Balearic margin is controlled by a SW-NE structural trend, whose main expressions are the Emile Baudot Escarpment transform fault, and a newly discovered WSW-ENE trend that affects the SW end of the escarpment and the abyssal plain. We relate the two structural trends to right-lateral simple shear as a consequence of the Miocene westward migration of the Gibraltar Arc. Newly discovered steep and narrow volcanic ridges were probably enabled to grow by local transtension along the transform margin. Abyssal plain knolls and seahills relate to the subsurface deformation of early stage halokinetic structures such as salt rollers, salt anticlines, and salt pillows. The limited thickness of the overburden and the limited amount of deformation in the deep basin prevent the formation of more mature halokinetic structures such as diapirs, salt walls, bulbs, and salt extrusions. The uppermost sediment cover is affected by a dense pattern of sub-vertical small throw normal faults resulting from extensional stress induced in the overburden by subsurface salt deformation structures. Shallow gas seismic character and the possible presence of an active polygonal fault system suggest upward fluid migration and fluid and sediment expulsion at the seafloor through a probable mud volcano and other piercement structures. One large debris flow deposit, named Formentera Debris Flow, has been identified on the lower slope and rise of the south Formentera margin. Based on current observations, we hypothesize that the landslide originating the Formentera Debris Flow occurred in the Holocene, perhaps in historical times.
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