Alexander Pereira

RESUMO A nutrição tem se tornado uma ferramenta estratégica na produção de galinhas poedeiras, impulsionada pela crescente demanda por alimentos funcionais, sustentáveis e com valor agregado. Estratégias alimentares que visam otimizar o desempenho produtivo, a saúde intestinal, a imunidade das aves e a qualidade dos ovos vêm sendo amplamente exploradas. Entre os recursos nutricionais avaliados, destacam-se os ácidos graxos poli-insaturados, antioxidantes naturais, compostos imunomoduladores, ácidos orgânicos e pigmentos naturais ou sintéticos. Este capítulo revisa evidências científicas recentes sobre o uso desses ingredientes na alimentação de poedeiras, com foco em seus efeitos sobre desempenho, qualidade interna e externa dos ovos, saúde intestinal e resposta imune. Os dados apontam que ingredientes funcionais podem melhorar a produtividade, elevar a qualidade dos ovos e reduzir doenças intestinais, favorecendo um ambiente intestinal mais saudável. Ácidos orgânicos, por exemplo, mostraram-se eficazes como alternativas aos antibióticos promotores de crescimento, enquanto pigmentos naturais como os extraídos da calêndula oferecem soluções sustentáveis aos corantes sintéticos. No entanto, a adoção dessas estratégias enfrenta desafios práticos, como o custo elevado, a variabilidade na composição de compostos naturais e a adequação aos sistemas alternativos de produção, como o orgânico. A nutrição funcional é promissora para aprimorar a produção de ovos e responder às exigências do mercado, desde que acompanhada de análise econômica, adaptação ao sistema produtivo e suporte técnico especializado. Palavras-chave: avicultura sustentável; bioativos naturais; pufas; saúde aviária.

Chapter Overview: This chapter looks at the foundations of modern psychiatry, with its stress on neurological malfunction, and asks about its strengths and limitations. We start by tracing some of the historical development of the ideas that have found their way into modern psychiatry from their roots in 19th-century medicine and neuroscience. Turning to the present day, we briefly look at competing conceptions of mental illness, before we discuss the philosophy of science that forms some of the theoretical foundations of modern psychiatry. We suggest that modern psychiatry makes a number of commitments that are quite familiar to philosophers of psychology, employing mechanistic explanations to address disorders that are seen as natural kinds. We end with an example that seems to fit this picture, specific phobia, and one that seems not to, addiction.

In order to study early human development while avoiding the burdens associated with human embryo research, scientists are redirecting their efforts towards so-called human embryo-like structures (hELS). hELS are created from clusters of human pluripotent stem cells and seem capable of mimicking early human development with increasing accuracy. Notwithstanding, hELS research finds itself at the intersection of historically controversial fields, and the expectation that it might be received as similarly sensitive is prompting proactive law reform in many jurisdictions, including the Netherlands. However, studies on the public perception of hELS research remain scarce. To help guide policymakers and fill this gap in the literature, we conducted an explorative qualitative study aimed at mapping the range of perspectives in the Netherlands on the creation and research use of hELS. This article reports on a subset of our findings, namely those pertaining to (the degrees of and requirements for) confidence in research with hELS and its regulation. Despite commonly found disparities in confidence on emerging biotechnologies, we also found wide consensus regarding the requirements for having (more) confidence in hELS research. We conclude by reflecting on how these findings could be relevant to researchers and (Dutch) policymakers when interpreted within the context of their limitations.

The history of psychiatry does not inspire confidence, even among psychiatrists, and there has always been a cottage industry in medicine and psychology that wrestles with various conceptual problems around mental illness. It’s arguable that philosophers of science have not paid enough attention to this literature. Even if you aren’t interested in psychiatry, you might profit from the debates in psychometrics on the measurement of mental constructs, or look at the arguments over causation, reduction, and explanation that psychiatrists fight out among themselves, increasingly with some philosophical input. Kenneth Kendler is a major contributor to this literature as theorist, experimentalist, and (via his role in the DSM) institution-builder and gatekeeper. He stands out too for his willingness to engage and learn from philosophy; and also to teach, for many of us can vouch to learning a lot about psychiatry from Kendler’s willingness to collaborate with philosophers and integrate the two communities. So it is a great pleasure to have a selection of Kendler’s papers assembled in one place. The essays in this volume cover a variety of conceptual issues in psychiatry, together with some historical material looking at the recent development of biomedical psychiatry. The most notable historical piece is the chapter on the origins of the Fechner criteria for validation of diagnoses, which had an enormous impact on the development of biological psychiatry in the 1970s. This collection covers many issues, and we won’t try to discuss everything, instead opting for one or two main issues that we think philosophers of science will be especially interested in. But there is something here for almost everyone in philosophy of science, and we urge them to look at this volume even if psychiatry is not on their normal reading list.

This paper argues that specific phobia is an ideal kind of psychiatric disorder because it bears the marks of a mature medical diagnosis and is amenable to causal explanation. A new and ambitious program of ‘causal revolution’ has recently emerged in psychiatry that hopes to refurnish our taxonomies by discovering the underlying biological and psychological causes that create and maintain mental illness. I show that the sort of causal story envisioned by the program is a mechanistic property cluster (MPC) structure, which involves a causal mechanism that explains the co-occurrence of a disorder’s signs and symptoms (Kendler, Zachar & Craver, 2011). I then build a model of fear in humans and sketch a novel account of specific phobia as a configuration of the fear system in thrall to deregulated network dynamics such as hysteresis, tipping points, and feedback loops. Specific phobia has an MPC structure. I close by reflecting on whether we can reasonably expect other mental disorders to fit an MPC mold, and thus lend themselves to future causal validation. This paper shows that specific phobia holds a unique place in our picture of mental disorder that has so far been missed. It is an ideal kind of psychopathology.