While nature is widely acknowledged to contribute to people's well-being, nature based well-being indicators at city-level appear to be underprovided. This study aims at filling this gap by introducing a novel indicator based on the proximity of city-residents to nature that is of high-amenity. High-amenity nature is operationalized by combining unique systematic data on people's perceptions of...

PURPOSE To examine the agreement of a novel computer program measuring retinal vessel tortuosity with subjective assessment of tortuosity in school-aged children. METHODS Cross-sectional study of 387 retinal vessels (193 arterioles, 194 veins) from 28 eyes of 14 children (aged 10 years). Retinal digital images were analyzed using the Computer Assisted Image Analysis of the Retina (CAIAR) prog...

OBJECTIVE We refer to the effectiveness (known as pragmatic or real world) and efficacy (known as explanatory or desired or ideal world) of interventions. However, these terms seem to be randomly chosen by investigators who design clinical trials and do not always reflect the true purpose of the study. A pragmatic-explanatory continuum indicator summary tool was thus developed with the aim of i...

OBJECTIVES The present study is an attempt to experimentally induce a younger subjective age among older adults and to test whether they show better physical functioning when they are induced to feel younger. METHOD Participants were 49 older adults aged between 52 and 91 years. Following an initial measure of handgrip performance as an indicator of physical functioning, participants in the e...

[Purpose] To determine age-related differences in the subjective vertical in the frontal plane in healthy adults. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were 26 healthy adults. For the subjective visual vertical (SVV), subjects were presented with a visual indicator in front of them that was rotated. For the subjective postural vertical-eyes open (SPV-EO) and subjective postural vertical (SPV), su...

This paper presents some aspects related to the issues of aggregating economic indicators. Departing from the research of Gh. Paun (1983) we will prove a theorem which states that under certain, natural assumptions, it is impossible to obtain an optimum aggregation. Unlike the original work of Paun, in this paper we are giving a rather simple proof of this theorem.

The validity of the Michaelis-Menten-Briggs-Haldane approximation for single enzyme reactions has recently been improved by the formalism of the total quasi-steady-state approximation. This approach is here extended to fully competitive systems, and a criterion for its validity is provided. We show that it extends the Michaelis-Menten-Briggs-Haldane approximation for such systems for a wide ran...

In December 2003, seventeen years after the first UK research assessment exercise, Italy started up its first-ever national research evaluation, with the aim to evaluate, using the peer review method, the excellence of the national research production. The evaluation involved 20 disciplinary areas, 102 research structures, 18,500 research products and 6,661 peer reviewers (1,465 from abroad); i...

Ameisen: Die heimliche Weltmacht (Ants: Nature's Secret Power) is a nature documentary about ants. Wolfgang Thaler wrote, filmed, and directed the film, which focuses on the work of ant researcher Bert Hölldobler. The 2004 film was produced by Adi Mayer Film for Österreichischer Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting), a public service broadcaster headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Ants: Nature's Secre...