The Mediterranean of the refugees: For a reading of colonial implications in spatial imagination

In my paper I am interested in both a semiotic analysis that captures the contemporary discourse on the Mediterranean and a study that connects it to the analysis of the meanings attached to the transit and presence of migrants and refugees in Europe and the Mediterranean, and to the historical reasons, power relations, colonial archives and memories that constitute what Sandro Mezzadra calls the “postcolonial condition” (Mezzadra, 2008). I title it the Mediterranean of the refugees with the purpose of stressing the multilayered semantic structure of the imaginary related to the refugee in/and the Mediterranean, as the result of a complex (and problematic) overlappings of meanings, figures, practices, and texts, sedimented through history and providing the material for specific discourses on the Mediterranean, Europe and its s/he Other(s). Semiotics, history, cultural studies, feminist and postcolonial perspectives and critical race studies help me to redefine the Mediterranean in a symbolic frame reproducing those meanings, figures, practices that convey memories and violence, protest, resistance and conflict

Introdução

O presente número temático nasce da colaboração da organizadora com outros dois intelectuais, nomeadamente, Fabrice Schurmans e Andrea Pezzè, também investigadores do Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra, e tem o seu início nos seminários que organizaram conjuntamente em 2016 sobre os temas do crime, fim do mundo e biopolítica. Por afinidade nas linhas de investigação, a iniciativa de compilação dos textos ali apresentados e o alargamento posterior ao convite à apresentação de..

Review article: Annalisa Oboe, ed., ‘Postcoloniale e revisione dei saperi’ in aut aut, Archivio 364/2014, Milano: Il Saggiatore

The text that follows is a review of the aut-aut special section dedicated to ‘The postcolonial and the revision of knowledge’ collecting important contributions from the project Postcolonialitalia, based in the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Padua (Italy) and led by Annalisa Oboe. The aut-aut special section follows the seminar, held in Padua in December 2013, Gli studi postcoloniali nelle scienze umane: storie, teorie, metodi e pratiche italiane. The section represents an important contribution to ongoing debates about postcolonial Italy, and the consequences of a re-thinking of epistemologies, identities and approaches within Italian postcolonial scholarship

The End of the World as We Know It. For a Postcolonial Investigation of the Meaning(s) of Environmental Catastrophe in Sci-Fi Films

This article explores fantasies behind ideas of disaster in terms of a regeneration of human society through or against a catastrophe generated by a non-human entity. I will investigate two products of mass visual culture, Annihilation by Alex Garland (2018), and Arrival by Denis Villeneuve (2016). My analysis will rely on a reading against the grain of Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness (2008), M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008), and Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible (2012), which I have examined in earlier studies (Giuliani, 2016a, 2017b). I will seek to compare and contrast these films, tracing how they developed out of a series of events and texts while also contextualising them in relation to contemporary conceptualisations of crisis, risk, catastrophe and disaster.Este artigo explora as fantasias subjacentes às ideias de desastre e de regeneração da sociedade humana através de ou contra uma catástrofe gerada por uma entidade não-humana. Irei investigar dois produtos da cultura visual de massas, Annihilation de Alex Garland (2018) e Arrival de Denis Villeneuve. A minha análise baseia-se numa leitura em contracorrente de Blindness de Fernando de Meirelles, The Happening de M. Night Shyamalan’s (2008) e de The Impossible, de Juan Antonio Bayona (2012), que examinei em trabalhos recentes (Giuliani, 2016a, 2017b). Tentarei comparar e pôr em contraste estes filmes, reconstituindo como se desenvolvem a partir de uma série de eventos e textos, ao mesmo tempo que os contextualizarei face a conceções contemporâneas de crise, risco, catástrofe e desastre

Il senso degli italiani (e degli europei) per l’Altrx che vien dal mare. Cinema, bianchezza e Middle Passage mediterraneo

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

CircAFF1 Is a Circular RNA with a Role in Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma Cell Migration

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), covalently closed RNAs that originate from back-splicing events, participate in the control of several processes, including those that occur in the development of pathological conditions such as cancer. Hereby, we describe circAFF1, a circular RNA overexpressed in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Using RH4 and RH30 cell lines, a classical cell line models for alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, we demonstrated that circAFF1 is a cytoplasmatic circRNA and its depletion impacts cell homeostasis favouring cell migration through the downregulation of genes involved in cell adhesion pathways. The presented data underline the importance of this circular RNA as a new partial suppressor of the alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma tumour progression and as a putative future therapeutic target

Metabolite and lipoprotein profiles reveal sex-related oxidative stress imbalance in de novo drug-naive Parkinson's disease patients

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the neurological disorder showing the greatest rise in prevalence from 1990 to 2016. Despite clinical definition criteria and a tremendous effort to develop objective biomarkers, precise diagnosis of PD is still unavailable at early stage. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have used omic methods to unveil the molecular basis of PD, providing a detailed characterization of potentially pathological alterations in various biological specimens. Metabolomics could provide useful insights to deepen our knowledge of PD aetiopathogenesis, to identify signatures that distinguish groups of patients and uncover responsive biomarkers of PD that may be significant in early detection and in tracking the disease progression and drug treatment efficacy. The present work is the first large metabolomic study based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with an independent validation cohort aiming at the serum characterization of de novo drug-naive PD patients. Here, NMR is applied to sera from large training and independent validation cohorts of German subjects. Multivariate and univariate approaches are used to infer metabolic differences that characterize the metabolite and the lipoprotein profiles of newly diagnosed de novo drug-naive PD patients also in relation to the biological sex of the subjects in the study, evidencing a more pronounced fingerprint of the pathology in male patients. The presence of a validation cohort allowed us to confirm altered levels of acetone and cholesterol in male PD patients. By comparing the metabolites and lipoproteins levels among de novo drug-naive PD patients, age- and sex-matched healthy controls, and a group of advanced PD patients, we detected several descriptors of stronger oxidative stress

The association between insight and depressive symptoms in schizophrenia: Undirected and Bayesian network analyses

Background. Greater levels of insight may be linked with depressive symptoms among patients with schizophrenia, however, it would be useful to characterize this association at symptom-level, in order to inform research on interventions. Methods. Data on depressive symptoms (Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia) and insight (G12 item from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) were obtained from 921 community-dwelling, clinically-stable individuals with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia, recruited in a nationwide multicenter study. Network analysis was used to explore the most relevant connections between insight and depressive symptoms, including potential confounders in the model (neurocognitive and social-cognitive functioning, positive, negative and disorganization symptoms, extrapyramidal symptoms, hostility, internalized stigma, and perceived discrimination). Bayesian network analysis was used to estimate a directed acyclic graph (DAG) while investigating the most likely direction of the putative causal association between insight and depression. Results. After adjusting for confounders, better levels of insight were associated with greater self-depreciation, pathological guilt, morning depression and suicidal ideation. No difference in global network structure was detected for socioeconomic status, service engagement or illness severity. The DAG confirmed the presence of an association between greater insight and self-depreciation, suggesting the more probable causal direction was from insight to depressive symptoms. Conclusions. In schizophrenia, better levels of insight may cause self-depreciation and, possibly, other depressive symptoms. Person-centered and narrative psychotherapeutic approaches may be particularly fit to improve patient insight without dampening self-esteem