The Past ‘Interpreter’. Historical Stratifications in the Ritual Symbolism of Saint Joseph Festivals and Holy Week in Sicily

I temi della continuità culturale e della "sopravvivenza" del simbolismo rituale sono stati al centro dibattito in campo religioso antropologico e storico. Sono diventati di nuovo di attualità in relazione alla la patrimonializzazione di feste religiose "tradizionali" come San Giuseppe e la Settimana Santa, festival il cui simbolismo rituale (banchetto sacro, processione, rami sempreverdi, pane rituale, canti e danze) mostra un'evidente radice pre-cristiana e agraria. Una serie di domande emergono sia sul l'utilità delle fonti storiche (archeologiche e documentarie) per quanto riguarda la comprensione delle realtà rituale temporanea, e sulla questione della continuità cronologica delle pratiche e delle credenze; Questi meritano di essere riconsiderate sulla base di nuove ricerche e osservazioni, considerando lo scioglimento di quella che è stata definita "civiltà rurale" e dei rinnovati interessi verso il patrimonio immateriale comunità alla ricerca delle loro matrici di identità. Possiamo e dobbiamo tornare a chiederci: può i token deterreni e immateriali del passato, anche i più remoti, ci aiutano a capire ciò che osserviamo contesti festivi in corso?The themes of cultural continuity and ‘survival’ of ritual symbolism have been at the centre of debate in the anthropological and historical religious fields. They became topical again in relation to the issue of the patrimonialization of ‘traditional’ religious festivals such as Saint Joseph and Holy Week, festivals whose ritual symbolism (sacred banquet, procession, evergreen branches, ritual breads, songs and dances) shows an evident pre-Christian and agrarian root. A number of questions emerge about both the usefulness of historical sources (archaeological and documentary) with regard to the understanding of contemporary ritual reality, and about the issue of the chronological continuity of practices and beliefs; these deserve to be reconsidered on the basis of renewed research and observations, considering the dissolution of what has been defined as ‘rural civilization’ and the renewed interests towards immaterial patrimony by communities searching for their identity matrices. We can and must go back to asking ourselves: can material and immaterial tokens of the past, even the remotest ones, help us understand what we observe in current festive contexts

Plants in Sicilian holy simbology

The Sicilian religious festivals present a rich and varied plant symbolism. In addition to the widespread practice of decorating processional statues with flowers, fruits, ears of wheat, green beans depending on the season and the phases of the agricultural cycles, the use of carrying processionally simple branches of laurel or more complex plant artifacts is widely observed. These uses are particularly present in the ceremonies of the Holy Week, in the spring festivals dedicated to Saint Joseph (March 19) and to the Holy Cross (May 3), in the summer ones dedicated to the patron saints. These are phenomena that clearly testify the continuity of ritual structures and symbols and which presently renew the cultural memory of a Sicilian society, lived for millennia of agriculture and farming

Di corsa, per forza. Performances rituali per la Domenica di Pasqua in Sicilia

Varie celebrazioni religiose siciliane sono caratterizzate da una particolare modalità di trasporto processionale dei fercoli recanti i simulacri dei Santi. Questi sono fatti correre e danzare da giovani devoti, spesso in gara tra loro, sia per le strade dei centri abitati sia, in rari casi, all’interno degli edifici religiosi. Tale modalità di trasporto è chiamata, soprattutto nei paesi dell’agrigentino occidentale, rigattiata. Diverse evidenze, in primo luogo il clima agonale, fanno ritenere che una medesima logica performativa presieda all’esecuzione rituale delle rigattiati e all’azione ergologica del lavoro dei campi. Il clima competitivo e conflittuale tra due o più fazioni avverse va, per altro verso, inserito all’interno del fenomeno, un tempo più ampiamente diffuso in Sicilia, delle “guerre di santi” e può essere riferito ai giochi di potere che articolano i rapporti tra le parti sociali. Ancora una volta si osserva come la festa religiosa in Sicilia si costituisca autenticamente come “fatto sociale totale”: come spazio-tempo della devozione, come momento elettivo di affermazione di qualità fisiche e morali, come occasione privilegiata di confronto tra parti sociali e politiche.Several sicilian religious celebrations are characterized by a particular mode of processional transport of the fercoli with the statues of the Saints. These are made to run and dance by devoted young men, often competing with each other, both on the streets of the inhabited centers and, in rare cases, inside the religious buildings. This mode of transport is called, especially in the countries of the western Agrigento’s area, “rigattiata”. Many evidences, first of all the agonal climate, suggest that the same performative logic presides over the ritual execution of the “rigattiati” and the ergological action of the work in the fields. The competitive and conflicting climate between two or more adverse factions is, on the other hand, inserted within the so called wars of saints’ phenomenon, once more widespread in Sicily, and can be referred to the power games that articulate relationships between the social partners. Once again we observe how the religious holiday in Sicily is authentically constituted as a “total social fact”: as a space-time of devotion, as an elective moment of affirmation of physical and moral qualities, as a privileged occasion for political confrontatio

Narrazioni e rappresentazioni del sacro femminile. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi in memoria di Giuseppe Martorana

Con Il riso di Demetra (1985), Giuseppe Martorana, professore ordinario di Storia delle Religioni presso l’Università degli studi di Palermo, esplorava le forme di religiosità al femminile in Sicilia, individuando tracce di continuità e persistenza che dai culti locali anellenici conducevano fino a forme di devozione cristiana. I contributi raccolti in questo volume intendono rendere omaggio alla sua memoria e riprendere criticamente i temi delle sue ricerche, indagando le narrazioni e le modalità di rappresentazione del sacro e del divino che coinvolgono l’elemento femminile, lungo un arco cronologico che dall’età del bronzo giunge all’età contemporanea e attraversa uno spazio geografico che dal Vicino Oriente conduce fino alla Grecia peninsulare e alla Sicilia. Tra le questioni sollevate, vi sono le minacce legate al mondo femminile; la consapevolezza del potenziale di rischio che alle donne è attribuito; l’agentività ad esse riconosciuta nello svolgimento dei rituali e nella partecipazione agli stessi; il ruolo del femminile nella tradizione narrativa. Ricorrenti sono inoltre i tentativi di ricostruzione degli spazi riservati al femminile, all’interno di culti specifici. Insieme a questi temi si avanzano riflessioni sulle continuità e sulle risemantizzazioni di elementi pertinenti a una religiosità antica al femminile osservabili in pratiche rituali tutt’ora vigenti. Un filo rosso attraversa questi i saggi: il necessario inquadramento storiografico di categorie e nozioni abusate come quella di “Grande madre”, di “religione mediterranea”, di “sostrato”, insieme a un ripensamento della categoria, fluida e sfuggente, di “sacro”.With Il Riso di Demetra (1985), Giuseppe Martorana, full professor of the History of Religions at the University of Palermo, explored the forms of feminine religiosity in Sicily, identifying traces of continuity and persistence that led from local annellenic cults to to forms of Christian devotion. The contributions collected in this volume intend to pay homage to her memory and critically resume the themes of her research, investigating the narratives and ways of representing the sacred and the divine that involve the female element, along a chronological span that from the age of bronze reaches the contemporary age and crosses a geographical space that from the Near East leads to peninsular Greece and Sicily. Among the issues raised, there are threats linked to the world of women; awareness of the risk potential that is attributed to women; the agency recognized to them in carrying out the rituals and participating in them; the role of the feminine in the narrative tradition. There are also recurrent attempts to reconstruct the spaces reserved for women, within specific cults. Along with these themes, reflections are advanced on the continuity and re-semantization of elements pertinent to an ancient feminine religiosity that can be observed in ritual practices that are still in force today. A common thread runs through these essays: the necessary classification historiographical of abused categories and notions such as that of "Great mother", of "Mediterranean religion", of "substratum", together with a rethinking of the fluid and elusive category of "sacred"

Caenorhabditis elegans Cyclin D/CDK4 and Cyclin E/CDK2 Induce Distinct Cell Cycle Re-Entry Programs in Differentiated Muscle Cells

Cell proliferation and differentiation are regulated in a highly coordinated and inverse manner during development and tissue homeostasis. Terminal differentiation usually coincides with cell cycle exit and is thought to engage stable transcriptional repression of cell cycle genes. Here, we examine the robustness of the post-mitotic state, using Caenorhabditis elegans muscle cells as a model. We found that expression of a G1 Cyclin and CDK initiates cell cycle re-entry in muscle cells without interfering with the differentiated state. Cyclin D/CDK4 (CYD-1/CDK-4) expression was sufficient to induce DNA synthesis in muscle cells, in contrast to Cyclin E/CDK2 (CYE-1/CDK-2), which triggered mitotic events. Tissue-specific gene-expression profiling and single molecule FISH experiments revealed that Cyclin D and E kinases activate an extensive and overlapping set of cell cycle genes in muscle, yet failed to induce some key activators of G1/S progression. Surprisingly, CYD-1/CDK-4 also induced an additional set of genes primarily associated with growth and metabolism, which were not activated by CYE-1/CDK-2. Moreover, CYD-1/CDK-4 expression also down-regulated a large number of genes enriched for catabolic functions. These results highlight distinct functions for the two G1 Cyclin/CDK complexes and reveal a previously unknown activity of Cyclin D/CDK-4 in regulating metabolic gene expression. Furthermore, our data demonstrate that many cell cycle genes can still be transcriptionally induced in post-mitotic muscle cells, while maintenance of the post-mitotic state might depend on stable repression of a limited number of critical cell cycle regulators

Context-Dependent Requirement for dE2F during Oncogenic Proliferation

The Hippo pathway negatively regulates the cell number in epithelial tissue. Upon its inactivation, an excess of cells is produced. These additional cells are generated from an increased rate of cell division, followed by inappropriate proliferation of cells that have failed to exit the cell cycle. We analyzed the consequence of inactivation of the entire E2F family of transcription factors in these two settings. In Drosophila, there is a single activator, dE2F1, and a single repressor, dE2F2, which act antagonistically to each other during development. While the loss of the activator dE2F1 results in a severe impairment in cell proliferation, this defect is rescued by the simultaneous loss of the repressor dE2F2, as cell proliferation occurs relatively normally in the absence of both dE2F proteins. We found that the combined inactivation of dE2F1 and dE2F2 had no significant effect on the increased rate of cell division of Hippo pathway mutant cells. In striking contrast, inappropriate proliferation of cells that failed to exit the cell cycle was efficiently blocked. Furthermore, our data suggest that such inappropriate proliferation was primarily dependent on the activator, de2f1, as loss of de2f2 was inconsequential. Consistently, Hippo pathway mutant cells had elevated E2F activity and induced dE2F1 expression at a point when wild-type cells normally exit the cell cycle. Thus, we uncovered a critical requirement for the dE2F family during inappropriate proliferation of Hippo pathway mutant cells

Intra-gastric balloon as an adjunct to lifestyle support in severely obese adolescents; Impact on weight, physical activity, cardio-respiratory fitness and psychosocial wellbeing.

BACKGROUND: Severe adolescent obesity (BMI>99.6th centile) is a significant public health challenge. Current non-invasive treatments, including community-based lifestyle interventions, are often of limited effectiveness in this population, with NICE guidelines suggesting the use of bariatric surgery as the last line of treatment (NICE, 2013). Health professionals are understandably reluctant to commission bariatric surgery and as an alternative, the use of an intra-gastric balloon as an adjunct to a lifestyle programme might offer a reversible, potentially safer and less invasive option. OBJECTIVES: Explore the use of an intra-gastric balloon as an adjunct to a lifestyle support programme, to promote weight loss in severely obese adolescents. Outcomes included Weight loss, Waist and Hip measurements, psychosocial outcomes including health related quality of life and physical self-perceptions, physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness. METHOD: Non-randomised pilot study. Results: 12 severely obese adolescents (5 males, 7 females; mean age 15yrs; BMI >3.5 s.d.; puberty stage 4 or more) and their families were recruited. Mean weight loss at 12 months (n=9) was 3.05 kg±14.69; d=0.002, P=0.550, and a BMI Z-score (n=12) change of 0.2 s.d.; d=0.7, P=0.002 was observed at 6 months with a large effect, but was not sustained at 12 months (mean change 0.1 s.d.; d=0.3, P=0.146 ) At 24 months (n=10) there was a weight gain from baseline of +9.9 kg±1.21 (d=0.4; P=0.433). Adolescent and parent HRQoL scores exceeded the minimal clinical important difference between baseline and 12 months for all domains but showed some decline at 24 months. CONCLUSION: An intra-gastric balloon as an adjunct to a lifestyle support programme represents a safe and well tolerated treatment approach in severely obese adolescents, with short-term effects on weight change. Improvements in psychosocial health, physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness were maintained at 12 months, with varying results at 24 months