524 research outputs found
Quadro sinottico delle trasformazioni dei giardini, del parco e della tenuta del Castello di Agliè (1624-1940)
No full textIl contributo illustra sinteticamente l’intera evoluzione dei giardini, del parco e della tenuta del Castello di Agliè dal suo nascere ai primi decenni del Novecento, comparando in maniera sinottica le complesse trasformazioni attraverso schemi grafici in grado di rappresentare in maniera essenziale ed efficace lo stratificato palinsesto alladiese
Are ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices involved in the computerized Corsi block-tapping test execution? An fNIRS study
No full textThe Corsi block-tapping test (CBT) is an old neuropsychological test that, requiring the storage and the reproduction of spatial locations, assesses spatial working memory (WM). Despite its wide use in clinical practice, the specific contribution of prefrontal cortex (PFC) subregions during CBT execution has not been clarified yet. Considering the importance of spatial WM in daily life and the well-known role of ventrolateral- PFC/dorsolateral-PFC (VLPFC/DLPFC) in WM processes, the present study was aimed at investigating, by a 20-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system (including four short-separation channels), the hemodynamic response of the VLPFC/DLPFC during a computerized version of the CBT. Thirty-nine university students were asked to perform CBT standard version (CBTs), block-suppression CBT (CBTb), and control task (CBTc). A VLPFC activation during CBTs and a DLPFC activation during CBTb were hypothesized. The results of the Bayesian analysis have not shown a delineated specific activation of VLPFC/DLPFC during either CBTs or CBTb. These results together with the related ones obtained by others using fMRI are not sufficient to definitively state the role of the PFC subregions during CBT execution. The adoption of high-density diffuse optical tomography would be helpful in further exploration of the PFC involvement in spatial WM tasks
Cantieri tanatologici. Trauma vs scrittura nell’opera di Chloé Delaume
No full textThis article investigates the relationship between trauma and writing in Chloé Delaume’s oeuvre. Autofiction, the genre chosen by the French author, together with her personal idea of literature, creates a fictional universe whose aim is to change the real one. In this way, trauma is, at the same time, the subject of Delaume’s books and the result she wants to achieve. The mise en scène of her private story, through formal research and language experimentation, aspires to create a new identity for herself and to involve her readers in an individual search for awareness
THE ROLE OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL CALCIUM UNIPORTER (MCU) IN THE CARDIAC INJURY INDUCED BY ISCHEMIA AND REPERFUSION
No full textMitochondrial Ca2+ uptake has been suggested to contribute to the cardiac injury induced by ischemia reperfusion. This notion has been derived from studies using pharmacological approaches due to the lack of information in protein involved in mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake (Ferrari, Di Lisa et al. 1982). The recent identification of the molecular identity of the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU) (De Stefani, Raffaello et al. 2011) allows a genetic approaches. Based on the available notion MCU deletion could be protected against I/R injury , that should be exacerbated by MCU overexpression. The present result provide a more complex picture where by a model increase in mitochondrial Ca2+ elicits cardioprotection that is lost under condition of mitochondrial Ca2+ overload.
Neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) overexpressing MCU by adenovirus infection showed a reduction in I/R-induced cell death as compared to wild type (wt) cells (41.82% ±8.37 vs 60.44% ±11.68, p<0.05). The in vitro evidence of cardioprotection was confirmed also ex vivo in perfused hearts overexpressing MCU by means of adenoassociated virus infection. Indeed, reperfusion after 40 min of global ischemia resulted in a significant decrease of lactate dehydrogenase release as compared to wt hearts (16.14 ±11.69 vs 67.01 ±0.07). This increased tolerance to I/R injury was associated with a large decrease in levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon reperfusion. However, starting at 12 h after infection NRVMs displayed a slight increase in ROS levels associated with an increase in Akt phosphorylation (1.98± 0.06 fold) leading to the activation of this pro-survival kinase. Upstream of Akt, protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) was more phosphorylated (2.8 ± 0.26 fold) resulting in its inactivation. Notably, Akt activation is abolished by antioxidants treatment.
Overall, these findings suggest that a slight increase in mitochondrial Ca2+ induced by MCU overexpression triggers a protective response involving a mild oxidative stress that eventually stimulates the activity of survival pathways. The protection by MCU overexpression was abolished when a further increase in mitochondrial Ca2+ was induced by the co-expression of MICU1. This latter evidence confirms that mitochondrial Ca2+ overload is a determining factor in the loss of cardiac viability occurring during post ischemic reperfusion. Therefore, the balance between protection and injury appears to be modulated by levels of intramitochondrial Ca2+. In this respect, the results of this Thesis provide novel evidence that a mild increase in mitochondrial Ca2+ elicits cardioprotection by stimulating ROS formation. It is tempting to speculate that this mechanism is involved also in the protective effect against cardiac diseases induced by exercise
Alternative analyses of political representation in urban Congressional districts
No full textThis dissertation critically examines the processes and outcomes of the representative constituency
relationship within urban congressional districts in the United States. In each of the dissertation’s three essays, the project addresses the following claims: 1)
studies of representation within a political jurisdiction may be more robustly addressed through analyses of a variety of tools that members use to foster relationships with their constituencies; 2) members who represent racial and ethnic minorities and other politically marginalized or vulnerable constituencies utilize a number of these tools of representation to develop and maintain relationships with their constituencies; and 3) the study of representation in the U.S. is intrinsically linked to conceptual and physical spatial elements that define the parameters of political behavior toward particular constituents or communities. The project incorporates data from a variety of sources
including participant observation and interviews of congressional staff as well as congressional hearings, appropriations earmarks, and census data to substantiate both the overall claims as well as specific conclusions posed within each essay.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Marika-Eugenia Dun
Does ventrolateral prefrontal cortex help in searching for the lost key? Evidence from an fNIRS study
No full textThe Key Search Task (KST) is a neuropsychological
test that requires strategies for searching a lost key in an
imaginary field. This request may involve different cognitive
processes as mental imagery and navigation planning. This
study was aimed at investigating, by a twenty-channel functional
near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system, the hemodynamic
response (i.e., oxygenated-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and
deoxygenated-hemoglobin (HHb) changes) of the prefrontal
cortex in navigation planning. A right ventrolateral prefrontal
cortex (rVLPFC) activation during the KST was hypothesized.
Thirty-eight volunteers performed the KST and a
Control Task (CT), the latter requiring the volunteers to mark
the X letter. An activation (i.e., increase/decrease in O2Hb/
HHb) of: 1) rVLPFC during the KST execution, and 2) bilateral
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the CT
execution was found. The present study provides a contribution
in localizing the rVLPFC as the critically active region,
within the frontal lobes, that was found maximally activated
during mental navigation in the mind’s eye of healthy participants
while performing the KST. Considering the contribution
of rVLPFC in spatial navigation, its activation suggests
that the KST could be adopted in the clinical routine for investigating
navigation planning. Compared to other neuroimaging
techniques, fNIRS (with its relatively low physical constraints)
contributes to better clarifying the role of rVLPFC in
some aspects of human navigation. Therefore, the combined
use of the fNIRS and the KST could be considered as an
innovative and valid tool to evaluate fundamental functions
for everyday life, such as spatial navigation planning
Assembling identity: the object-portrait in American art, 1917-1927
No full textI examine the social and historical context for the creation of object-portraits in American art in the decade following the First World War. Object-portraits are portraits in which the artist has replaced an image of the subject’s face or body with an object or a collection of objects. This phenomenon occurs specifically in the postwar moment when several actual and intellectual assault on selfhood – from the mechanization of the Great War, the effects of the Machine Age, developments in the field of psychology that challenged traditional notions of the self, and the burgeoning consumer culture and national advertising industry – caused artists to reassess the very nature of portraiture. What they were faced with was nothing less than the question of what it meant to be human in the modern age. Their answer to this problem, in the form of the object-portraits, redefined the boundaries between subject and object, human and thing. There are three main avenues of interdisciplinary inquiry this study has taken in order to determine how the social history of the self is written upon the object-portrait. First, I examine how contemporary shifts in the growing field of psychology impacted the understanding of identity in such a way as to de-center the self away from both the body and from the concept of a unified stable core. Object-portraits responded to this de-tabilizing of identity by searching for other means of visualizing the subject. Second, I analyze the history of technology and specifically of the body-machine metaphor to consider the various ways the object-portraits evince both a fascination with, and anxiety about, the machine in its myriad forms. And finally, I examine the contemporary advertising industry and consumer culture ideology, fueled by the application of psychology to commerce, and its manipulation of the subject/object relationship. I argue that the object-portraits, particularly the ones that appropriate an advertising aesthetic, participated in and commented on this marketed discourse. Therefore, the object-portraits examined here appear at the intersection of several histories. They anchor a variety of threads, from psychology to technology to advertising, and elucidate the construction of the self in the interwar period.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Kim Marika Sel
Enhancement of childrens creative action in visual art lessons at preschool
No full textKvalifikācijas darbs “ Bērna radošās darbības sekmēšana vizuālās mākslas nodarbībās pirmsskolā “. Autore Marika Savicka . Darba mērķis ir pētīt bērnu radošās darbības sekmēšanas iespējas vizuālās mākslas nodarbībās pirmsskolā. Darba pirmajā daļā autore analizēja dažādu pedagogu un psihologu literatūra par radošo darbību ,pētīti pedagoģiskie līdzekļi bērnu radošuma sekmēšanai, empīriski pētītas vizuālās mākslas nodarbībās pirmsskolā. Darba otrajā daļā analizētas teorētiskās pētīšanas metodes – pedagoģiskās, psiholoģiskās un mākslas literatūras par “ Bērna radošās darbības sekmēšana vizuālās mākslas nodarbībās pirmsskolā “. Veiktas empīriskās metodes– novērošana, intervija , iegūto rezultātu analīze par “ Bērna radošās darbības sekmēšana vizuālās mākslas nodarbībās pirmsskolā “ . Darbs sastāv no anotācijas latviešu un angļu valodā, ievada, satura rādītāja, pirmās nodaļas ar četriem apakšpunktiem , otrās nodaļas ar četriem apakšpunktiem, secinājumiem, literatūras saraksta un pielikumiem. Darbs sastāv no 51 lapaspuses, tajā izmantotas 8 tabulas un 3 attēli.Qualification work "Promoting the child's creative activity in visual arts lessons in preschool". Author Marika Savicka. The object of the work is to study the possibilities of promoting children's creative activity in visual art lessons in preschool. In the first paragraph of the work, the author analyzed the literature of various pedagogues and psychologists about creative activities, studied pedagogical methods for promoting children's creativity, empirically studied visual art lessons in preschool. The second paragraph of the work analyzes theoretical research methods - pedagogical, psychological and literature of art about "Promotion of the child's creative actions in visual arts lessons in preschool". An empirical method has been done - observation, interview, and analysis of the obtained results about the "Promotion of the child's creative actions in visual arts lessons in the preschool". The work consists of annotations in Latvian and English, the introduction, the table of content, the first chapter with four paragraphs, the second chapter with four paragraphs, conclusions, list of literature and appendices. The work consists of 51 pages, it uses 8 tables and 3 images
The Promotions of Sustainable Lunch Meals in School Feeding Programs: The Case of Italy
No full textSchool is considered a privileged environment for health education and school feeding represents an opportunity for promoting sustainable foods to young generations. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that is possible to select, from existing school menus, recipes that combine healthy foods with low environmental impact. A national sample of Italian school menus was collected and a total number of 194 recipes were included on a database containing 70 first courses, 83 s courses, 39 side dishes, 1 portion of fruit, and 1 portion of bread. A mathematical model was conceived to combine nutritional adequacy and acceptability criteria while minimizing GHGs emissions. The result is a four-week menu characterized by large vegetable components that were used not only as side dishes but also as ingredients in the first and second courses. Legumes and pasta are often included, and white meat is selected instead of red meat. The findings presented in this paper demonstrated that it is possible to design environmental-friendly meals from existing school menus. The mathematical model developed in this work has the potentiality of being completely scalable, easily updatable, and widely utilizable in different settings either for design or monitoring purposes as well as for research data collection
- …
