The Purple Movement: Social Media and Activism in Berlusconi’s Italy

This research project assesses the relationship between the use of Facebook and the development of social movements throughout their life cycle by focusing on the case study of Popolo Viola. On 5th December, 2009, hundreds of thousands of Italian citizens took to the streets of Rome to say ‘no’ to the politics of Silvio Berlusconi’s government and to ask for his resignation as Prime Minister. The demonstration was planned and organized, mainly on Facebook, by a group of bloggers. A single-issue protest rapidly evolved into a social movement, called ‘Popolo Viola’, ‘Purple People’. The colour purple was chosen because it was not previously associated with any political movement, and as a word to the wise that the movement was not linked to any political party. New groups and pages arose on Facebook: apart from the page ‘il Popolo Viola’, which now had more than 460,000 members (data August, 2013), thousands of pages and groups were opened at a local level, both inside and outside Italy. Through the lenses of Social Movement Theory and the Critical Theory of Technology this study focuses on the role played by the use of Facebook in the development of the movement’s organizational structure, the building of its collective identity, and its mobilization processes. The methodology adopted for this purpose includes both quantitative and qualitative methods: on the one hand, there is an analysis of membership data and interaction levels on the Popolo Viola Facebook page, and a survey; on the other hand, there are in-depth interviews with the Facebook page administrators, influential members and activists of the movement, and content analysis of the online conversations among activists. The findings of this research show how Facebook proved to be an efficient mobilizing structure for the social movement only on a short-term basis. After its initial success, the incompatibility between the commercial interests behind Facebook’s design, and the ideology of Popolo Viola became manifest. Facebook failed to provide the movement with the necessary instruments in terms of a shared democratic management of its resources. The inability to manage Facebook pages and groups according to commonly agreed values promoted vertical power structures within the movement, contributing to controversial management of the Facebook page and to internal divisions which significantly hindered the potential of the anti-Berlusconi protest. Moreover, gradual changes in the Facebook code increasingly promoted top-down flows of communication which, in conjunction with controversial decisions in the moderation of discussions that were made by the page administrators, progressively decreased the plurality of voices within the movement’s page, and hampered the formation of a strong collective identity. Facebook therefore proved to represent much more than a mere communication tool for Popolo Viola, playing a vital role in influencing the movement’s structure, leadership, communication flows and collective identity. The rise and fall of Popolo Viola, with all its complexity, constitutes a useful case study of the evaluation of technology as a problematic force for social change. That said, this is not an issue which relates to the technology itself, but rather to the values and interests that drive the actors who are involved in this power struggle. Taking into account the relationships between culture, technology and capital, this study offers a balanced assessment of the dynamics which characterize the development of social movement protest on commercial Social Network Media

Erratum: Fluctuation relations for systems in a constant magnetic field (Physical Review E (2020) 102 (030101R) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.102.030101)

Erratum. After the publication of this paper, we found an inconsequential mistake in the derivation of the dissipation function for the Nosé-Hoover thermostatted system, Eq. (17) of the original paper. A complete and correct derivation for O(0)(X) is now reported in Appendix B of Ref. [1], where, in particular, it is shown that (Formula Presented) (Figure Presented)

Fluctuation relations for systems in a constant magnetic field

The validity of the fluctuation relations (FRs) for systems in a constant magnetic field is investigated. Recently introduced time-reversal symmetries that hold in the presence of static electric and magnetic fields and of deterministic thermostats are used to prove the transient FRs without invoking, as commonly done, inversion of the magnetic field. Steady-state FRs are also derived, under the t-mixing condition. These results extend the predictive power of important statistical mechanics relations. We illustrate this via the nonlinear response for the cumulants of the dissipation, showing how the alternative FRs enable one to determine analytically null cumulants also for systems in a single magnetic field

Fluctuation relations for dissipative systems in constant external magnetic field: Theory and molecular dynamics simulations

We illustrate how, contrary to common belief, transient Fluctuation Relations (FRs) for systems in constant external magnetic field hold without the inversion of the field. Building on previous work providing generalized time-reversal symmetries for systems in parallel external magnetic and electric fields, we observe that the standard proof of these important nonequilibrium properties can be fully reinstated in the presence of net dissipation. This generalizes recent results for the FRs in orthogonal fields-an interesting but less commonly investigated geometry-and enables direct comparison with existing literature. We also present for the first time a numerical demonstration of the validity of the transient FRs with nonzero magnetic field via nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of a realistic model of liquid NaCl

Research Note: Cecal microbiota harbored by free-range chickens may influence the reduction of Helicobacter pullorum relative abundance

Helicobacter pullorum is recognized as an emerging food-borne pathogen that may colonize the intestinal tract and the liver of avian species and humans causing several gastrointestinal and liver diseases. However, not all strains are reported to be capable of causing clinical disease, thus making poultry as reservoir for the zoonotic transmission of the infection through carcass contamination of broilers at slaughter. In poultry, the prevalence of this bacterium could be underestimated and the available data mainly refer to conventional rearing systems, whereas free-range and organic breedings have been poorly investigated. Therefore, this study was aimed to characterize the caecal microbiota community of free-range grown chickens and determine the presence and the relative abundance of H. pullorum by using NGS-based 16S rDNA sequencing. A total of 18 chickens reared for 56 d on a semi-extensive management system were euthanized at two time points: 9 birds at 28 d of age (before have access to outdoor; I = Indoor) and other 9 birds at 56 d of age (before slaughter; O = Outdoor). Cecal contents were collected for microbiota analyses. H. pullorum was detected in the cecum of 16/18 samples and its proportion in indoor was significantly higher than outdoor chickens (2.46 and 0.52%, respectively; P < 0.05), showing 78.8% of decrease with the outdoor access of the chickens. Therefore, it may be assumed that the potential for zoonotic infection is less likely. Moreover, H. pullorum was negatively correlated with 17 bacterial species as significantly more abundant in Outdoor microbial caecal communities. Among these, we highlighted the presence of Mucispirillium schaedleri and Oscillospira, already previously associated with a healthy gut and thus representing promising gut bacterial markers for host health. Our findings suggest that alternative production systems with outdoor access, may play a crucial role in the establishment of a healthy gut microbiota, which in turn might prevent colonization of harmful bacteria such as Helicobacter pullorum

Non-malleable codes for space-bounded tampering

Non-malleable codes—introduced by Dziembowski, Pietrzak and Wichs at ICS 2010—are key-less coding schemes in which mauling attempts to an encoding of a given message, w.r.t. some class of tampering adversaries, result in a decoded value that is either identical or unrelated to the original message. Such codes are very useful for protecting arbitrary cryptographic primitives against tampering attacks against the memory. Clearly, non-malleability is hopeless if the class of tampering adversaries includes the decoding and encoding algorithm. To circumvent this obstacle, the majority of past research focused on designing non-malleable codes for various tampering classes, albeit assuming that the adversary is unable to decode. Nonetheless, in many concrete settings, this assumption is not realistic

Oral sodium butyrate supplementation ameliorates paclitaxel-induced behavioral and intestinal dysfunction

Paclitaxel (PTX) is one of the most broadly used chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of several tumor types including ovarian, breast, and non-small cell lung cancer. However, its use is limited by debilitating side effects, involving both gastrointestinal and behavioral dysfunctions. Due to growing evidence showing a link between impaired gut function and chemotherapy-associated behavioral changes, the aim of this study was to identify a novel therapeutic approach to manage PTX-induced gut and brain comorbidities. Mice were pre-treated with sodium butyrate (BuNa) for 30 days before receiving PTX. After 14 days, mice underwent to behavioral analysis and biochemical investigations of gut barrier integrity and microbiota composition. Paired evaluations of gut functions revealed that the treatment with BuNa restored PTX-induced altered gut barrier integrity, microbiota composition and food intake suggesting a gut-to-brain communication. The treatment with BuNa also ameliorated depressive- and anxiety-like behaviors induced by PTX in mice, and these effects were associated with neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory outcomes. These results propose that diet supplementation with this safe postbiotic might be considered when managing PTX-induced central side effects during cancer therapy

DNA methylation landscape of the genes regulating D-serine and D-aspartate metabolism in post-mortem brain from controls and subjects with schizophrenia

The spatio-temporal regulation of genes involved in the synthesis and degradation of D-serine and D-aspartate such as serine racemase (SR), D-amino acid oxidase (DAO), G72 and D-aspartate oxidase (DDO), play pivotal roles in determining the correct levels of these D-amino acids in the human brain. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of mRNA expression and DNA methylation status of these genes in post-mortem samples from hippocampus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and cerebellum from patients with schizophrenia and non-psychiatric controls. DNA methylation analysis was performed at an ultradeep level, measuring individual epialleles frequency by single molecule approach. Differential CpG methylation and expression was detected across different brain regions, although no significant correlations were found with diagnosis. G72 showed the highest CpG and non-CpG methylation degree, which may explain the repression of G72 transcription in the brain regions considered here. Conversely, in line with the sustained SR mRNA expression in the analyzed areas, very low methylation levels were detected at this gene's regulatory regions. Furthermore, for DAO and DDO, our single-molecule methylation approach demonstrated that analysis of epiallele distribution was able to detect differences in DNA methylation representing area-specific methylation signatures, which are likely not detectable with targeted or genome-wide classic methylation analyses

Electromechanical coupling of the Kv1.1 voltage-gated K+ channel is fine-tuned by the simplest amino acid residue in the S4-S5 linker

Investigating the Shaker-related K+ channel Kv1.1, the dysfunction of which is responsible for episodic ataxia 1 (EA1), at the functional and molecular level provides valuable understandings on normal channel dynamics, structural correlates underlying voltage-gating, and disease-causing mechanisms. Most studies focused on apparently functional amino acid residues composing voltage-gated K+ channels, neglecting the simplest ones. Glycine at position 311 of Kv1.1 is highly conserved both evolutionarily and within the Kv channel superfamily, is located in a region functionally relevant (the S4-S5 linker), and results in overt disease when mutated (p.G311D). By mutating the G311 residue to aspartate, we show here that the channel voltage-gating, activation, deactivation, inactivation, and window currents are markedly affected. In silico, modeling shows this glycine residue is strategically placed at one end of the linker helix which must be free to both bend and move past other portions of the protein during the channel’s opening and closing. This is befitting of a glycine residue as its small neutral side chain allows for movement unhindered by interaction with any other amino acid. Results presented reveal the crucial importance of a distinct glycine residue, within the S4-S5 linker, in the voltage-dependent electromechanical coupling that control channel gating