La pericolosità del malato di mente

The article examines the complex historical, ideological, psychological and political reasons that led in Italy to the abolition of the “dangerousness of the mentally ill” as a concept in ordinary psychiatric legislation through law no. 180 of 1978 while leaving it completely intact in penal legislation as regards the mentally ill perpetrators of crimes. The latter type of dangerousness has indeed been left in place also by the very recent law no. 9 of 2012 initiating the definitive superseding of the last psychiatric hospitals still operating in Italy after law no. 180, namely the secure units. The limitations and contradictions resulting both in practice and in principle from this glaring discrepancy are discussed and some possible solutions are put forward

Play-on-Wor(l)ds: The Connection Between Language and Culture in Wordplay Use in Italy, Britain, the United States, Germany and Japan

Language and culture are intrinsically connected (Lotman, 1978:212) and this union, along with the universal concept of humour, is what breeds the production of wordplay in almost every community. Subject of this paper will be to explore the nature, production and local perception of wordplay, not only as humorous tool, but also as a protest or, again, as a way to capture the attention of an audience. We will be ‘visiting’ Italy, Britain, the United States, Germany and Japan to see how differently – or similarly – these countries perceive and make use of play-on-words

CT study of pelvic limb alignment in English Bulldog

Il trattamento delle deformità ossee nel campo della chirurgia ortopedica veterinaria ha subito un’importante evoluzione nelle ultime due decadi facendo crescere i noi chirurghi il bisogno di linee guida sempre più specifiche per approcciare l’allineamento appendicolare delle diverse e sempre più numerose razze canine. In questo lavoro la nostra attenzione è rivolta all’arto pelvico del Bulldog Inglese, razza volutamente condrodistrofica e raramente presa in esame dalla letteratura odierna. Il nostro studio si focalizza sulla lussazione mediale di rotula nel Bulldog inglese, una patologia che determina dolore, zoppia e malattia degenerativa dell'articolazione. Causa principale risulta essere il malallineamento dell’arto pelvico capace di determinare una dislocazione mediale o laterale della patella rispetto al solco trocleare. L’approccio diagnostico e quindi terapeutico deve essere scelto sulla base di un preciso studio dell’allineamento scheletrico e desmo-muscolo-tendineo di tutto l’arto pelvico. Molteplici linee guida sono state sviluppate nel corso degli anni per una misurazione sempre più accurata delle diverse deviazioni assiali dell’osso, ad oggi persiste un ampio dibattito su quale possa essere considerato il metodo migliore da applicare. Questo lavoro scientifico si prefigge di determinare gli angoli femorali e tibiali mediante misurazioni eseguite su ricostruzioni 3D Volume Rendering ottenute da studi CT (Computed Tomographic) di soggetti di razza Bulldog Inglese sani ed affetti da lussazione mediale di rotula in modo da descrivere eventuali differenze tra le due popolazioni prese in esame, definire valori standard di razza e confrontarli con valori appartenenti ad altre razze canine già studiate in letteratura.Bone deformity treatment in dogs has undergone a major evolution in the last two decades. Veterinary orthopedic surgeons are in need of more specific guidelines to approach limb alignment of the various canine breeds. Our study focuses on medial patellar luxation in English Bulldogs, a disease that can cause pain, lameness and degenerative joint disease. According to various authors, the main cause of the disease seems to be the pelvic limb malalignment whish is able to determine a medial or lateral dislocation of the patella from the trochlear groove. The diagnostic approach and subsequent treatment should therefore be chosen on the basis of a precise study of bone alignment, desmo-muscular tissue and tendons of the pelvic limb. Many guidelines have been developed over the years for a more accurate measurement of the different axial deviations of the bone. To date, there is still an interesting debate on what might be considered the best method to apply. The aim of our study is to determine, through measurements on 3D Volume Rendering reconstructions obtained from CT studies (Computed Tomographic), the femoral and tibial angles on both healthy English Bulldog and MPL affected ones in order to describe any differences between the two populations examined, define standard breed angles and compare our results with those already published on other breeds

Cannibalismo, predazione, socialità: un’ipotesi sulla nascita della violenza

In this article the main topics are the problem concerning the role of the neverending rising of the violence in the passing of time and its misterious cultural and biological origins. We start from the main cultural Greek events (the birth of tragedy, the theme of the “scapegoat”), to a deep analysis of biological human and animal behaviours. All the uplisted phenomena are marked by a constant conflict between matriarch and patriarch societies and between mainly male generations, through that mediation of the female element. We focus on the fact that the cultural and natural inextricable tangle is based on the predatory origin human kind and on the primary cannibal conflict between adult man and the progeny of the female, against which the species reacted with all kind of means. First of all modifying her own sexual behaviour (in examples overpassing the female genius and letting women become receptive for what concerns the sexual aspects towards men); secondly inventing a sort of symbolic language. The essential elements of the human antipredatory defences (sexuality, conscience, symbolic language) could be the ones, simil-sexual, based on the receptivity and on the ability of absorbing the diverse, that is the “other”, and of neutralising him. All this facing the predatory violence, coming from the internal of the species, and absorbing it through sexuality and language. In this way violence is modified and becomes almost a “son”. Summing up the connection between biology and environment was the source of the most plastic capacities of the human nature, that is the cultural ones. This mechanism concerned sexuality, sociality and its linguistic derivates. As the sexual perversions are the result of the annexation of biological predation (sexuality), the cultural codes (the sense of guilty) and war, are the annexation of the most mental antipredatory defence (conscience and language deriving from sociality). The result of defending themselves from the predation, in a more mental way, was a ritual and cultural methaphore and, at the same time, a way to push externally the familiar centre, the one which the primary predatory conflict belonged to. It was from this conflict that the human evolution took its origin and a lot of examples are given in the Bible and in the Universal Myth. Following this idea, Religions, cultural symbolic codes, sexuality are joined together in their “circuit” running with predation. This kind of running produces ambiguous antipredatory defences; in fact they absorb predation (and the “other” too) but notwithstanding, they are able to change the “other” and to generate the caracteristic, continuous change, called “culture”. So predation, that was born as the starting point of human nature, nowadays works as eternal source of culture, giving to it the capability to change and to evolute itself

Les Damnés de la terre di Frantz Fanon: la traduzione di Cignetti cinquant'anni dopo

This essay analyzes the Italian translation of Les Damnés de la terre by Frantz Fanon, published by Einaudi in 1962, almost at the same time as the French text, and work of Carlo Cignetti. The analysis strives to highlight the need for a retranslation of the essay. After a brief introduction of the topic of retranslation and a presentation of the corpus, generally regarded as a manifesto of the anticolonial and student movements of the sixties and a milestone of Post-Colonial Studies, the essay focuses on the linguistic issues of Cignetti's translation. These stem from two phenomena that involve both the lexicon and the syntax used: (1) an overuse of calques from the French version and (2) a translation that ennobles the text, leading to its premature aging

L’eredità del Tenchini come punto di partenza per la ricostruzione della storia di un criminale del XIX secolo

Late in the 19th century, physician Lorenzo Tenchini undertook a study of criminal subjects and psy-chiatric patients. One of these was B.A., a 22-year-old soldier who committed suicide after attempting to kill his lover, a prostitute named G.I. The starting points of this study were the analysis of the subject's biography – data which resulted from the autopsy – and several observations on his brain and skull in accordance with the phrenological doctrine of that time. The goal of this work was to shed new light on an Italian criminal of the late 19th century and on Tenchini's work, combining the material collected by the doctor himself with sources of the period and modern medical knowledge.Alla fine del XIX secolo, il Dottor Lorenzo Tenchini intraprese uno studio su soggetti criminali e pazienti psichiatrici. Uno dei soggetti analizzati era B.A., un soldato di 22 anni che morì dopo aver tentato di uccidere la sua amante, una prostituta di nome G.I. I punti di partenza di questo studio sono stati l'analisi della biografia del soggetto, i dati emersi dall'autopsia e diverse osservazioni riguardanti il suo cervello e il cranio compiute secondo la dottrina frenologica dell'epoca. L'obiettivo di questo studio era di gettare nuova luce su un criminale italiano di fine '800 e sull'opera del Dottor Tenchini, unendo il materiale raccolto dal medico, con fonti dell'epoca e le moderne conoscenze mediche

Tenchini’s legacy as a starting point for the reconstruction of the history of a criminal in the 19th century|L’eredità del Tenchini come punto di partenza per la ricostruzione della storia di un criminale del XIX secolo

Late in the 19th century, physician Lorenzo Tenchini undertook a study of criminal subjects and psychiatric patients. One of these was B.A., a 22-year-old soldier who committed suicide after attempting to kill his lover, a prostitute named G.I. The starting points of this study were the analysis of the subject's biography – data which resulted from the autopsy – and several observations on his brain and skull in accordance with the phrenological doctrine of that time. The goal of this work was to shed new light on an Italian criminal of the late 19th century and on Tenchini's work, combining the material collected by the doctor himself with sources of the period and modern medical knowledge

New LOFAR detection in the galaxy cluster A1413: connection between non-thermal and thermal emission

Clusters of galaxies are the largest virialized systems in the Universe and thus are ideal laboratories to study the formation and evolution of cosmic structures. The intracluster medium (ICM), a plasma which has been heated, through gravitational collapse, up to temperatures of tens of millions degrees at density of few hundreds particles per cubic meter, emitting mostly in the X-ray band. At the same time, radio observations have proved that the ICM is mixed with a non-thermal component, i.e. highly relativistic particles and large-scale magnetic fields, detected through their synchrotron emission. This non-thermal component is linked to the cluster X-ray properties and understanding its origin is crucial for a comprehensive physical description of the ICM. In the last years, with the advent of new generation low-frequency radio telescopes, the classical dichotomy that connects merging events with giant halos and relaxed cool-core systems with mini-halos, has started to be questioned. In contrast to what has been generally believed, cluster-scale radio emission has also been observed in clusters with no sign of major mergers, indicating that minor mergers and/or sloshing of a dense cool core could trigger particle acceleration on larger scales and generate steep-spectrum radio emission. This work is dedicated to the peculiar galaxy cluster Abell 1413 that we discover to host a non-common radio emission. A1413 is a massive , hot, and nearby (z=0.1427) galaxy cluster. We performed a new study of A1413 with two main goals: (i) to characterize separately the thermal and non-thermal properties of the cluster; (ii) to understand the origin of the radio-emitting electrons through a combined radio and X-ray analysis