110 research outputs found
Valvular Damage
No full textValvular heart diseases (VHD) may be observed in patients with cancer for several reasons, including preexisting valve lesions, radiotherapy, infective endocarditis, and secondary to the left ventricle dysfunction. The incidence of VHD is especially in younger survivors treated with thoracic radiation therapy for certain malignancies, such as Hodgkin's lymphoma and breast cancer. The mechanism of radiation-induced damage to heart valves is not clear and includes diffuse fibrocalcific thickening of the valve. VHD is commonly diagnosed after a long latent period, in the context of clinical symptoms, or suspected on the basis of a new murmur. The evaluation includes identification of anatomical valve abnormalities, valve dysfunction, and assessing the functional consequences of valve dysfunction on the ventricles. Echocardiography is the optimal imaging technique for diagnostic and therapeutic management. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance and computed tomography (CT) may be used to assess the severity of VHD, but cardiac CT is mainly useful for detecting extensive calcifications of the ascending aorta. Patients exposed to mediastinal radiotherapy and minimal valve dysfunction require follow-up of 2u3 years, with moderate valve disease yearly, with severe, should be assessed for valve surgery
Introduction, Chronology, Select Bibliography
No full textextended introduction with a comprehensive as well as detailed analysis and interpretation of the novel, a chronology of the life of the author and suggested secondary source
Co-constructing Good Projects: the Functions of Sociological Knowledge in Educational Projects
No full textHow can an educational project dedicated to early childhood contribute to eliciting democratic ways of thinking and acting?
Following the sociological-pragmatist tradition, the author investigates institutional conditions that coud promote a good project.
The proposed thesis revolves around the formation of collective, theoretical and experiential knowledge in the production of which sociological knowledge plays a critical-comprehensive function and a participatory function. The former contributes to the historical-systemic understanding of local social needs, while the second links the quality of a project to a theory of social justice that is not merely redistributive but emancipatory, open to the discovery of the world and the construction of attentive educational relationships
A Italian Youth and the learning of history. Cultural resistances and pedagogical perspectives
No full textSociologists who have recently been interested in the condition of youth have emphasized the
function that the relationship with history has in the construction of social identities of young
people. This article, using analytical concepts and categories common to sociologists of action,
analyses the relationship of Italian youth with history and particularly of the youth living in the
regions of southern Italy. The author highlights the link between the learning of history and the
construction of youth identities, focusing on the function of different collective national and
regional memories in the formation of a critical historical consciousness. The methods and
educational strategies through which one may seek to encourage young people's critical learning
of history outline the salient elements of innovative pedagogies of history and trace working
assumptions to think about educational policies in relation to the multiple and heterogeneous
processes of development of contemporary societies
<i>Diary of a Bad Year</i> (2007): Coetzee between essay and autofiction
No full textIn his ‘Australian’ phase (that is, after 2002) J.M. Coetzee seems to have taken a decidedly anti-narrative turn towards hybridization of non-fiction and auto-fiction. In particular, Diary of a Bad Year is marked by the polemic character of its social and political criticism, and by the author’s unusual willingness to acknowledge that analysis as his own, albeit in his typical oblique ways.
The work – which is neither an essay, nor a novel, and not even a diary but a mixture of the three, eluding any attempt to define its genre – dramatizes the difficulty of being a man and an intellectual in these times and at an old age, and settles it graphically by dividing the page in three horizontal sections in a Freudian and Dostoevskian succession. Freudian, because in the upper part one reads the ‘strong opinions’ (short pamphlets) by a certain ‘John C’ (a manifest alter ego for the author himself) whereas the lower sections tell about the solitude and shabbiness of the man writing those pamphlets, and of the infatuation that makes a caricature of him; Dostoevskian, because – as a real underground man – John C unveils a whole range of not always commendable motives prompting his activity as a writer and his life choices; and also because it is in the basement of his apartment block that he encounters the alluring young woman whom he will later offer a Dostoevskian job as a typist – whereas J.M. Coetzee has her perform the role of the implicit reader.
The partition of the page – which imposes a non-sequential reading, arduous even for expert readers – enables Coetzee to stage his abdication to authorial authority (because the ‘strong opinions’ in the upper part of the page are to be gradually influenced by the reader Anya, who will later be entrusted with the narratorial function) as well as to expose as fictional any attempt to draw novelistic and essayistic rhetoric apart
Una riflessione sul riso e sull’umorismo ebraico: The King of Schnorrers di Israel Zangwill
No full textThe first part of the essay gives an overview of the main theoretical approaches to humour and laughter, with emphasis on Freud, Bergson, and Pirandello; on philosophers Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer; and finally on contemporary scholars Georges Minois and Donata Francescato. In the light of studies by Moni Ovadia, Marc-Alain Ouaknin, and Laura Salmon, the peculiar traits of Jewish humour and the functions it served are then examined, from its origins in Biblical writings and Midrashic literature to its later history. The essay then specifically examines British author Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) and his celebrated picaresque novel The King of Schnorrers (1894). In Zangwill’s novel, the stock character of the astute, money-grabbing Jew that had prevailed in the English literary tradition (with notable examples in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta , Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice , and Dickens’ Oliver Twist ) is recast by a Jewish writer who applies his talent for humour to bring into perspective and relativize British atavistic fears in the face of Jewish people and their tradition
El viento sabe nuestros nombres: cuento ganador del Certamen Literario Arturo Agüero Chaves, 2025
No full textThe Wind Knows Our Names, by Fiorella Trejos Molina, winner of the 2025 Arturo Agüero Chaves Literary Contest in the short story category, recreates the mystery of Cedrices de Concepción, a village lost in the mist of the Western mountains. Through the characters Fabiola, Antonio, and Tatiana, the author builds an atmosphere of magical realism where time stands still and reality blends with myth. The story reflects on identity, memory, and destiny, exploring the longing to escape and the weight of origin as both condemnation and belonging. El viento sabe nuestros nombres, de Fiorella Trejos Molina, ganador del Certamen Literario Arturo Agüero Chaves, 2025, en el género cuento, recrea el misterio de Cedrices de Concepción, un pueblo perdido entre la niebla de las montañas de Occidente. A través de los jóvenes Fabiola, Antonio y Tatiana, la autora construye una atmósfera de realismo mágico donde el tiempo se detiene y la realidad se confunde con el mito. El relato reflexiona sobre la identidad, la memoria y el destino, explorando el deseo de escapar y el peso del origen como condena y pertenencia a la vez.
The competitiveness of welfare systems analyzed through equity: a comparison between Italy and France
No full textThe following reflections start off from a comparative research on the implementation in different European countries of the regional european policies. Leaving a sector conception of community policies apart and, on the contrary, defending their interdependence with national policies, the author suggests that the execution processes of European structural funds may be affected by welfare systems spread nationwide. In particular, we think that social equity meant in a procedural significance as a political and economic arrangement of the different welfares and as an indicator of their collective legitimacy, represents the condition that, still distinguishing French and Italian welfares, slackens - both in France and in Italy - the implementation of community regional policies. Particularly, it seems that the aptitude of public actions to represent plural interests, to arrange public and private interests, to promote the emergency and organisation of private enterprise, to defend the pursuit of collective interests, constitutes a certain political mechanism that impede - in both countries - both the coordination between national public policies and european policies and the political and collective perception of economic urge that the latter can offer to competitiveness and innovation of the different welfares
Company Museum in Italy
No full textWithin the complex of Italian institutions involved in the conservation and advancement of the historic legacy of industrial design, company museums have become particularly significant because of their number and the quality of their work. Starting in the early Nineties – but prior examples may be found in the museums created by Pirelli in 1922 and even earlier by Richard-Ginori – we have witnessed the creation of a significant number of archives and museums; they form a constructive network of collections that document part of the industrialization process in Italy.
And though they do not legally constitute a recognized museum typology, their activity led to the foundation of a dedicated Association in 2001, a rather rare case in Europe, which captured the attention of the media in view of the advent of new dynamics in tourism and within the more general theme of the relationship between business and culture.
An initial overview by the author surveyed over 200 working institutions; among them, several of the most active museums belong to the most important Italian design industries.
This increase in quantity and quality has served to divulge stories, personalities and characteristics of manufacturing history, but has also contributed to the progressive identification of specific museographical, scientific and cultural issues and methodologies, clearly underscoring the inadequacy of traditional museum models for this type of structure. The nature of the industrial design discipline requires many different disciplines and points of view to engage in dialogue. If we choose the industrial artifact, for example, as the point of departure for our “story”, it could be the center around which the processes revolve of design, production, communication and consumption, or the relationship and repercussions of transformations of the environmental, economic and social contexts, becoming a temporal sequence in the “history of things”. To make this understandable, it is important to develop a museum “model” that can create a dialogue between the physical, paper-based and iconographic materials and everything else that constitutes a source for the history of industrial design.
The interest towards this category of museum is also based on one of the specificities and potentials of the company museum, which is the “active” contribution that “memory” can provide for the education of the designer within the manufacturing industry. A lateral but ideally central contribution which can become essential for the individual memory and identity of the structures and the legacy of museums-archives preserved and advanced by the industry, and for a more conscious and contemporary design. A living and operating museum that can prove decisive for the company’s work, and can serve to “educate” designers, but also other personnel active in related company functions
Clinical picture of rhinusinusitis and management of out-patients [Inquadramento clinico della rinosinusite e gestione del paziente in ambulatorio]
No full textRhinosinusitis is generally due to the propagation of a nasal inflammation and may involve one or more paranasal sinuses. Depending on how long the disturbance lasts, it is classified as acute, acute recurrent and chronic. The acute and acute recurrent forms are resolved with appropriate medical therapy and there is no permanent damage to the mucosa, unlike the chronic form the pharmacological therapy of which does not determine complete anatomical pathological cure and for which the sole treatment is surgical. The incidence of this pathology lies in a range of between 0.5% and 10% depending on which author is reporting. Usually secondary to a viral infection (Rhinovirus, parainfluenzal virus 1, 2, 3, syncytial respiratory virus, adenovirus, enterovirus) it complicates following bacterial attack (S. pneumoniae, H. influenzae, M. Catarrhalis, anaerobic Streptococchi and Bacteroides). Runny nose, cephalea, slight persistent fever, cough, halitosis are the symptoms that characterise nasosinus phlogistic pathology although they are not exclusive to these conditions and can occur in other infectious situations (mucopurulent rhinitis, rhinoadenoiditis). Standard X-ray pictures do not provide constantly reliable diagnostic elements; by contrast, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR) and optical fibre nasal endoscopy can provide precise information in view, for example, of a surgical programme. Antibiotic therapy is the cornerstone of the medical treatment of nasosinus infectious pathology. Among the antibiotics of choice we find amoxicillin clavulanate, the 2nd or 3rd generation oral cephalosporins, the ketolides and the quinolones. Other important therapeutic aids are those aimed at facilitating the reduction of the mucous oedema of the osteo-meatal complexes and drainage of secretions from the paranasal cavities and use of nasal washing with physiological solution, decongestion agents, mucolytics and possibly antihistaminics (allergic patients). Topical corticosteroids as shown by recent clinical studies most certainly represent a useful class of drugs for the management of rhinosinusitis. Surgical therapy is used on chronic and acutely complicated forms
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