Ritratto di un'autrice: il cinema di Gabriella Rosaleva

Ritratto di un’autrice. Il cinema di Gabriella Rosaleva [Portrait of a female auteur. The cinema of Gabriella Rosaleva] This dissertation is an expression of my interest for the role of women in film and media, which I have started to develop when I was working on my MA thesis. As is well known, the work of women is often underestimated in - and sometimes even completely erased from - the history of cinema. More specifically, I have decided to focus on Gabriella Rosaleva, an Italian filmmaker who has worked in film and television mainly during the 1980s and the 1990s. After an introductory chapter, I have focused on the reconstruction of Rosaleva’s biography and, subsequently, on the social and cultural context on which she has worked. In the central part of my dissertation I have extensively analysed her films. Starting from the description of the materials I have gathered during my research, I have examined the structural (narrative and stylistic) elements of Rosaleva’s cinema, outlining the recurrent motives and the most original and “personal” traits of her production - which I have further investigated in the conclusive chapter. Besides her cinematic oeuvre, I have also analysed in-depth a series of different texts, including her novel and a number of subjects, screenplays, and treatments for films that never got made. The second volume of the thesis presents an ample iconographic appendix and gathers a selection of her cinematic writings, which have been preserved from the decay of time through digitization

Between Tolstoj and Rosaleva. Different notes for the same Sonata

The purpose of this article is to analyse the television film La sonata a Kreutzer, directed by Gabriella Rosaleva in 1985, and compare it to both the adapted source novella The Kreutzer Sonata (Tolstoy 1989), and with Tolstoy’s and his wife Sofja Tolstaya’s personal diaries.Rosaleva, an experimental author in the Eighties and Nineties, came to work on La sonata a Kreutzer due to the thematic correlation the novella had to her previous work. The novella’s exploration of music, feelings, and death were already widely addressed in Rosaleva's existing filmography, in particular her first short films shot on Super 8. La sonata a Kreutzer was written by Rosaleva and Paola di Monreale with the primary purpose to remain as faithful as possible to Tolstoy’s novella. The article will offer a comparative analysis of some of the key sequences in the film and novella, to emphasise their similarities and differences.The comparison, however, does not only look to measure the fidelity of the film itself, but instead will look to examine Rosaleva’s own work as a director. Specifically, how she works within the strictures of adapting a classic text such as The Kreutzer Sonata

Produzione di carotenoidi in <i>Rhodotorula glutinis</i> su glicerolo

With the aim developing useful tools for the elucidation of the carotenogenic pathway and the optimization of β-carotene production in Rhodotorula glutinis, the wild strain C2.5t1 and the β-carotene overproducing 400A15 and the albino 200A6 mutants were utilized. Comparative proteomic analyses of the three strains by 2D-DIGE, followed by tandem mass spectrometry of proteins that are more expressed in the 400A15 mutant, led to the identifications of 37 sequences associated to enzymes that have a role in the biosynthesis of acetyl CoA and in the production of β-carotene. The application of two multifactorial experimental designs to 400A15 showed that the fine tuning of the concentration of carbon and nitrogen sources and of oxygen availability determines a significant increase in the production of β-carotene in 400A15 in respect to the wild strain. Moreover, the development of a multi-parametric flow cytometry method allowed the real time monitoring of the production of β-carotene and of the physiological state of the cell in bench scale fermentations. In summary, although the proteomic data originated by this study will need to be integrated by genomic data to deepen current knowledge on the carotenogenic pathway in R. glutinis, the results here reported represent a further step towards a more complete understanding of a poorly characterized yeast and its biotechnological exploitation

Artistic adjustment of image spectral slope

The Fourier spectral slope of 31 artworks was compared to the spectral slope of closely matched photographic images. The artworks were found to display a relatively narrow range of spectral slopes relative to the photographs. Two accounts for this range compression were investigated. The first proposes that the band-pass nature of the visual system’s psychophysical ‘window of visibility’ is responsible. Simulation of this effect by application of an appropriate spatial filter to the original photographs could not explain the range compression, unless one assumed a consistent relation between the visual angle subtended by the scene at the artist’s eye, and the scene’s spectral slope (such that scenes with a steep slope subtended larger angles than scenes with a shallow slope). The second account involves more complex ‘artistic’ filtering which smoothes out textural details while preserving edges. Application of two such filters to the photographs was able to reproduce the spectral slope range compression evident in artworks. Both explanations posit a central role for the artist’s visual system in adjusting image spectral slope, which can be modelled using visual filters

Proteomic analysis of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa : dealing with the issues of a non-conventional yeast

Red yeasts ascribed to the species Rhodotorula mucilaginosa are gaining increasing attention, due to their numerous biotechnological applications, spanning carotenoid production, liquid bioremediation, heavy metal biotransformation and antifungal and plant growth-promoting actions, but also for their role as opportunistic pathogens. Nevertheless, their characterization at the 'omic' level is still scarce. Here, we applied different proteomic workflows to R. mucilaginosa with the aim of assessing their potential in generating information on proteins and functions of biotechnological interest, with a particular focus on the carotenogenic pathway. After optimization of protein extraction, we tested several gel-based (including 2D-DIGE) and gel-free sample preparation techniques, followed by tandem mass spectrometry analysis. Contextually, we evaluated different bioinformatic strategies for protein identification and interpretation of the biological significance of the dataset. When 2D-DIGE analysis was applied, not all spots returned a unambiguous identification and no carotenogenic enzymes were identified, even upon the application of different database search strategies. Then, the application of shotgun proteomic workflows with varying levels of sensitivity provided a picture of the information depth that can be reached with different analytical resources, and resulted in a plethora of information on R. mucilaginosa metabolism. However, also in these cases no proteins related to the carotenogenic pathway were identified, thus indicating that further improvements in sequence databases and functional annotations are strictly needed for increasing the outcome of proteomic analysis of this and other non-conventional yeasts

Event-Related Potentials Dissociate Effects of Salience and Space in Biased Competition for Visual Representation

BACKGROUND: Selective visual attention is the process by which the visual system enhances behaviorally relevant stimuli and filters out others. Visual attention is thought to operate through a cortical mechanism known as biased competition. Representations of stimuli within cortical visual areas compete such that they mutually suppress each others' neural response. Competition increases with stimulus proximity and can be biased in favor of one stimulus (over another) as a function of stimulus significance, salience, or expectancy. Though there is considerable evidence of biased competition within the human visual system, the dynamics of the process remain unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we used scalp-recorded electroencephalography (EEG) to examine neural correlates of biased competition in the human visual system. In two experiments, subjects performed a task requiring them to either simultaneously identify two targets (Experiment 1) or discriminate one target while ignoring a decoy (Experiment 2). Competition was manipulated by altering the spatial separation between target(s) and/or decoy. Both experimental tasks should induce competition between stimuli. However, only the task of Experiment 2 should invoke a strong bias in favor of the target (over the decoy). The amplitude of two lateralized components of the event-related potential, the N2pc and Ptc, mirrored these predictions. N2pc amplitude increased with increasing stimulus separation in Experiments 1 and 2. However, Ptc amplitude varied only in Experiment 2, becoming more positive with decreased spatial separation. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results suggest that N2pc and Ptc components may index distinct processes of biased competition--N2pc reflecting visual competitive interactions and Ptc reflecting a bias in processing necessary to individuate task-relevant stimuli

Attention Reshapes Center-Surround Receptive Field Structure in Macaque Cortical Area MT

Directing spatial attention to a location inside the classical receptive field (cRF) of a neuron in macaque medial temporal area (MT) shifts the center of the cRF toward the attended location. Here we investigate the influence of spatial attention on the profile of the inhibitory surround present in many MT neurons. Two monkeys attended to the fixation point or to 1 of 2 random dot patterns (RDPs) placed inside or next to the cRF, whereas a third RDP (the probe) was briefly presented in quick succession across the cRF and surround. The probe presentation responses were used to compute a map of the excitatory receptive field and its inhibitory surround. Attention systematically reshapes the receptive field profile, independently shifting both center and surround toward the attended location. Furthermore, cRF size is changed as a function of relative distance to the attentional focus: attention inside the cRF shrinks it, whereas directing attention next to the cRF expands it. In addition, we find systematic changes in surround inhibition and cRF amplitude. This nonmultiplicative push–pull modulation of the receptive field's center-surround structure optimizes processing at and near the attentional focus to strengthen the representation of the attended stimulus while reducing influences from distractors

Near or far: the effect of spatial distance and vocabulary knowledge on word learning

The current study investigated the role of spatial distance in word learning. Two-year-old children saw three novel objects named while the objects were either in close proximity to each other or spatially separated. Children were then tested on their retention for the name-object associations. Keeping the objects spatially separated from each other during naming was associated with increased retention for children with larger vocabularies. Children with a lower vocabulary size demonstrated better retention if they saw objects in close proximity to each other during naming. This demonstrates that keeping a clear view of objects during naming improves word learning for children who have already learned many words, but keeping objects within close proximal range is better for children at earlier stages of vocabulary acquisition. The effect of distance is therefore not equal across varying vocabulary sizes. The influences of visual crowding, cognitive load, and vocabulary size on word learning are discussed

Modelling Visual Search with the Selective Attention for Identification Model (VS-SAIM): A Novel Explanation for Visual Search Asymmetries

In earlier work, we developed the Selective Attention for Identification Model (SAIM [16]). SAIM models the human ability to perform translation-invariant object identification in multiple object scenes. SAIM suggests that central for this ability is an interaction between parallel competitive processes in a selection stage and a object identification stage. In this paper, we applied the model to visual search experiments involving simple lines and letters. We presented successful simulation results for asymmetric and symmetric searches and for the influence of background line orientations. Search asymmetry refers to changes in search performance when the roles of target item and non-target item (distractor) are swapped. In line with other models of visual search, the results suggest that a large part of the empirical evidence can be explained by competitive processes in the brain, which are modulated by the similarity between target and distractor. The simulations also suggest that another important factor is the feature properties of distractors. Finally, the simulations indicate that search asymmetries can be the outcome of interactions between top-down (knowledge about search items) and bottom-up (feature of search items) processing. This interaction in VS-SAIM is dominated by a novel mechanism, the knowledge-based on-centre-off-surround receptive field. This receptive field is reminiscent of the classical receptive fields but the exact shape is modulated by both, top-down and bottom-up processes. The paper discusses supporting evidence for the existence of this novel concept