101 research outputs found
Inhibitory reflexes in human perioral facial muscles: a single-motor unit study
No full textOBJECTIVE: To describe the reflex responses evoked by trigeminal stimulation in perioral facial motor units (MUs) in humans. METHODS: We recorded single motor units (MUs) from perioral muscles performing three movements: elevation of the upper lip (levator labii superioris muscle--LLS), protrusion of the lips (orbicularis oris muscle--OOr) and depression of the lower lip (depressor anguli oris and depressor labii inferioris muscles--DAO/DLI) with concentric needle electrodes. MUs were tested during constant voluntary activation with non-painful cutaneous electrical stimuli applied to the mental or supraorbital nerves and intraorally. Analysis was performed with peristimulus histograms and cumulative sum. RESULTS: Eighty MUs were sampled from 17 subjects. Cutaneous stimulation induced inhibition of discharge in 100% of the lip-depressor MUs, inhibition in 65-70% of LLS MUs and in 25% of OOr MUs. Mean latency of inhibition was of 35+/-12ms. Intraoral stimulation produced an equivalent percentage of inhibitory or facilitatory effects with no difference among the three muscles. CONCLUSIONS: Reflex responses to cutaneous stimulation identify a completely inhibitory (DAO/DLI), a mainly inhibitory (LLS) and a mixed (OOr) pattern in perioral muscles. SIGNIFICANCE: A purely inhibitory trigemino-facial reflex is present in lip-lowering muscles with potential use in clinical practice
Momenti di tregua. Progetti fra il fiume Oreto e la fossa della Garofala a Palermo
No full textIn origine, l’uomo era del tutto subordinato alla natura. L’architettura gli offriva riparo, un seppur temporaneo benessere. Il pericolo si è ridotto nella domesticità; le pietre sono diventate mattoni e anche i terreni più accidentati sono stati antropizzati.
All’inizio del XX secolo, quando l’urbanesimo incalzava, i parchi erano stati considerati esito dello sviluppo della città (Migge, 1919) e, contemporaneamente, ne avevano costituito la stessa condizione insediativa (Le Corbusier, 1922). Tuttavia, l’artificio ha prevalso come edificazione estesa e pervasiva a discapito dei sistemi ecologici.
La dialettica uomo/natura in architettura è cambiata progressivamente rispecchiando un contesto culturale più ampio. In particolare, nella contemporaneità si osserva un allontanamento in atto dalle modalità insediative del progetto urbano degli anni 70-80 (Quaroni, 1983; Ferra- ri, 2005), per assumere, davanti alle fragilità ambientali, finanziarie ed energetiche, un impegno “di transizione”, ecologista (Nicolin, 2021). I nuovi frammenti si compongono con quelli che si trovano sul posto, in attesa di ulteriori trasformazioni antropiche e naturali.
Sperimentazioni progettuali, condotte nell’ambito di laboratori di progettazione architettonica e del paesaggio, prefigurano alternative per aree abbandonate e residuali di Palermo, fra la Valle del fiume Oreto e la fossa della Garofala. Una composizione di alcune delle soluzioni elaborate offre un quadro aperto. Un affresco che contribuisce a mettere a fuoco quella dimensione intermedia in cui sembra impigliarsi il passaggio dal- la natura all’artificio e, viceversa, dalla costruzione appena completata al rudere. Nella successione d’insieme, le proposte rafforzano la loro capacità narrativa; testano una possibile solidarietà fra proposizioni e parti eterogenee ed esprimono come l’architettura possa, ancora, concedere momenti di tregua, stavolta nell’esperienza urbana.Originally, the human being was completely subordinated to the nature. Architecture offered him a shelter, albeit temporary a moment of serenity. Domesticity weaken the danger; the stones became bricks and even the roughest terrains have been man-made. At the beginning of the 20th century, when urbanism was pressing, parks had been considered the result of the development of the city (Migge, 1919) and, at the same time, had constituted its very settlement condition (Le Corbusier, 1922). However, artifice prevailed as extensive and pervasive construction at the expense of ecological systems.
The man/nature dialectic in architecture changed progressively reflecting a wider cultural context. In particular, in the contemporary world we observe an ongoing departure from the settlement methods of the urban project of the 70s-80s (Quaroni, 1983; Ferrari, 2005), to assume, in the face of environmental, financial and energy fragility, an ecologist commitment "of transition” (Nicolin, 2021). The new fragments are made up of those found on site, awaiting further anthropic and natural transformations.
Design experiments, carried out in architectural and landscape design laboratories, prefigure alternatives for abandoned and residual areas in Palermo, between the Oreto river valley and the Garofala area. A composition of some of the elaborated solutions offers an open picture. A fresco that helps to focus on that intermediate dimension in which the passage from nature to artifice and, vice versa, from the just completed building to the ruin, seems to get caught up. In the overall succession, the proposals strengthen their narrative capacity; they test a possible solidarity between propositions and heterogeneous parts and express how architecture can still grant moments of respite in the urban experience
L’analisi della conversazione istituzionale: applicazioni e prospettive
No full textLa Conversation Analysis si occupa del parlato quotidiano, di interazioni comunicative qualsiasi, tra amici o sconosciuti, tra commesso e cliente, insegnante e allievi, terapeuta e paziente. Gli esempi delle applicazioni potrebbero essere infiniti, dato che la conversazione e le sue varianti "istituzionali", come l’intervista o il dibattito, costituiscono la forma di comunicazione più immediata e diffusa. Nell'articolo l’autrice introduce alla Analisi della Conversazione, ne illustra gli aspetti di base, ne mostra le applicazioni alle interazioni comunicative istituzionali e propone una sinergia interdisciplinare a partire da un nucleo sociologico con indicazioni operative e prospettive per la ricerca.The Conversation Analysis deals with the daily speech, it deals with any communicative interactions among friends or strangers, among clerk and customer, teacher and students, therapist and patient. The examples of its applications may be infinite, since ordinary conversation and “institutional talk”, such as interview or debate, are the most immediate and widespread form of communication. The article introduces the Conversation Analysis illustrating its basic aspects and it shows its applications to institutional communicative interactions. From a sociological perspective, the author proposes an interdisciplinary synergy with operational guidance and prospects for research
Rigenerazione della cornea. Dalla scoperta all'approvazione di un prodotto medicinale di terapia avanzata contenente cellule staminali in Europa
No full textGrey and white matter changes at different stages of Alzheimer's disease
No full textThis study investigates abnormalities of grey (GM) and white matter (WM) in Alzheimer's disease (AD), by modeling the AD pathological process as a continuous course between normal aging and fully developed dementia, with amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) as an intermediate stage. All subjects (9 AD, 16 aMCI patients, and 13 healthy controls) underwent a full neuropsychological assessment and an MRI examination at 3 Tesla, including a volumetric scan and diffusion tensor (DT)-MRI. The volumes were processed to perform a voxel-based morphometric analysis of GM and WM volume, while DT-MRI data were analyzed using tract based spatial statistics, to estimate changes in fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity data. GM and WM volume and mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy were compared across the three groups, and their correlation with cognitive functions was investigated. While AD presented a pattern of widespread GM atrophy, tissue loss was more subtle in patients with aMCI. WM atrophy was mainly located in the temporal lobe, but evidence of WM microscopic damage, assessed by DT-MRI, was also observable in the thalamic radiations and in the corpus callosum. Memory and executive functions correlated with either GM volume or fractional anisotropy in fronto-temporal areas. In conclusion, this study shows a comprehensive assessment of the brain tissue damage across AD evolution, providing insights on different pathophysiological mechanisms (GM atrophy, Wallerian degeneration, and brain disconnection) and their possible association with clinical aspects of cognitive decline
Double-blind comparison between optical and conventional impressions for the production of mandibular advancement devices
No full textBackground: Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a sleep disorder with a high social and health impact. Mandibular advancement devices (MADs) are considered a viable treatment option and a possible first-line treatment in this setting. No study in the literature has investigated clinical aspects of these devices in relation to the procedures used to manufacture them. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical adequacy of MADs produced starting from conventional analog versus digital impressions; (2) Methods: Four patients were recruited. For each of them, two MADs were produced: one starting from an intraoral scan and the other from the digitalization of a plaster model based on analog impressions. Clinical parameters of the two devices were evaluated and compared; (3) Results: No statistically significant differences in the clinical parameters evaluated were found between the two groups of devices; (4) Conclusion: Optical and conventional impressions show similar accuracy in the production of MADs
Urban Forestry
No full textThe essay has been developed on the occasion of the X Forum ProArch, National Scientific Society of Architectural Design teachers, SSD ICAR 14-15-16, held in Genoa, on 16-17-18 November 2023. The result is a lemmary where the author focuses on “Urban Forestry” as an architectural response to the urgency of reversing the process of transformation of the cities. What does Architecture do when permeable soils and cultivated or wooded areas grow? How buildings help the expansion into the towns of freshness, silence, perfume, beauty, sense of common belonging? Above all in the last twenty years, physical-perceptive systems capable of providing the city with services that, to a common observer, might seem to belong to natural processes have been envisaged. But Urban Forestry does not replicate nature, an impossible objective, but rather reproduces it or emulates some functions. Similarly to Artificial Intelligence, it can actually enhance the creative action of man and contribute to integrating, in qualitative terms, the political response to climate change
Concilio Vaticano II e progetto urbano. Le chiese di San Raffaele Arcangelo e San Giovanni Evangelista a Palermo
No full textTo begin once again a moral and economic duty. Italy, after Second World War: according to Fanfani and Tupini’s laws (1949), INA-casa and its procuring enti- ties’ ventures made a motor of urban renewal from the enthusiasm and the commitment of many entrepreneurs and public administrators. In Palermo, the agricultural lands began to include new neighbourhoods designed as part of the reconstruction after the bombardment of the old city, which had to be restored.
Soon big private capital had been involved also coming from «people until that time unrelated to building entre- preneurship» «many landowners located in the surroun- dings of the historic city sold the farthest part of it, applying a price of “agricultural land” in order to build public housing and infrastructure works. When the value of the crossed and not sold areas increased greatly , they began new speculation plans». Quickly, the new districts merged with the historic centre and with the continuous town of the nineteenth-twentieth century.
In the fifties, between the town and its geographic limits (the mountains of the Corona dei Colli) a ring has been hypothesized. It was also useful to link the new residen- tial peripheral areas. In the sixties, the new roads marked a border beyond and around there were still a lot of citrus groves, vineyards, olive groves, flowers and gardens. In the fields, little rural buildings, warehouses and villas arose. The urban aggregations only were the thin clusters of historic villages.
Among the new neighbourhoods there are the villaggio Santa Rosalia (1951) and the Centro di Edilizia Popolare CEP (1954), where the churches San Raffaele Arcangelo (1959) and San Giovanni Evangelista (1965) have been realized according with the design by Giuseppe Spatrisano (Palermo, 1899-1985). Spatrisano was Ernesto Basile’s student but also a teacher himself at University of Palermo. At that time, among others, he was a protagonist designer and intellectual within the urban transformation. Indeed, the aim to regulate the growth of the city results in the Town Plan started in 1956 by the same Spatrisano with Salvatore Caronia, Edoardo Caracciolo, Luigi Epifanio Pietro Villa and Vittorio Ziino. This plan underwent several drafts before being approved in 1962.
Therefore, the churches San Raffaele Arcangelo and San Giovanni Evangelista are two pieces of a big transformation of the town. At the same time, these architectures show another innovation promulgated by the Church that was renewing itself during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
For these reasons, both the architectures will be described, from a double perspective: from the outside, looking also at the city, and from the inside, considering the liturgical questions.
It is interesting to understand how, in these specific cases, the outer and insider shells of the buildings, result from several external and internal conditions that interact each others in relationships of cause and effect, defining the surrounding spaces.
The choice to compare these two churches comes from some analogies that help to clarify the salient issues on first: the urban design in the new neighbourhoods of Palermo; second: the Spatrisano’s interpretation of the indications by the Church about the design of new places of worship, that was, at that time, the focus of the archi- tectural debate.
The similarities found are not really in the final architec- tural solution, rather in the process of the intermediate configurations. Both planning processes show a cultural change in progress about the relation between “church- context-conciliar reforms” and, therefore, they can help
to know generally Italian churches built since the begin- ning of the sixties.
Giuseppe Spatrisano often cultivated the interest, pre- sent in the Faculty of Architecture of Palermo, to the relationship between the architecture and its context. In 1948, he investigated this issue, for example, through the project of the Nautical Institute of Palermo, where existing and new paths would have to penetrate the buil- ding, shaping it. The school has been designed as urban hinge between three important areas of the city’s historic core: the Cala harbour, Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Via Butera. The outside is an intimate part of the archi- tecture. This happens also in his design for the Casa del Mutilato in Palermo (1935-1937) where, as Gianni Pirrone writes, Spatrisano «through a free interpretation of Hypaethros temple, centralizes and resolve the entire composition of the building in the cella-patio».6 This work, the best known by this author, is a manifesto of belonging to the Rationalism; it represents abandonment of the nineteenth-century language and of the traditional stylistic elements, from which, nevertheless, Spatrisano is always fascinated, as the historical and neorealist refe- rences of its last architectures show.
In fact, in the years immediately following the war, he preferred rigid blocks, continuous curtains-wall and por- ches, agreed with his colleagues Bonafede, Gagliardo, Ziino for the Nautical Institute and with Epifanio, Santangelo and Ziino for the New Way of the Palermo Harbour (1949). But a few years later he applied slight distortions to the volumes, emphasizing the differences between the parties.
In the sixties, his choice of a neorealist architectural language can be partly attributed to the tasks commissioned him in that period. The Nautical Institute or the Casa del Mutilato were silent and sometimes repetitive architectures that perfectly integrate within the complexity of the existing urban fabric. Instead, the new suburbs of Palermo, where Spatrisano is called to work, at that time arose in the countryside, out of the solid mass of the old town and out of the ordinate nineteenth century expansion
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