Children with cerebral palsy exhibit greater and more regular postural sway than typically developing children

Following recent advances in the analysis of centre-of-pressure (COP) recordings, we examined the structure of COP trajectories in ten children (nine in the analyses) with cerebral palsy (CP) and nine typically developing (TD) children while standing quietly with eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC) and with concurrent visual COP feedback (FB). In particular, we quantified COP trajectories in terms of both the amount and regularity of sway. We hypothesised that: (1) compared to TD children, CP children exhibit a greater amount of sway and more regular sway and (2) concurrent visual feedback (creating an external functional context for postural control, inducing a more external focus of attention) decreases both the amount of sway and sway regularity in TD and CP children alike, while closing the eyes has opposite effects. The data were largely in agreement with both hypotheses. Compared to TD children, the amount of sway tended to be larger in CP children, while sway was more regular. Furthermore, the presence of concurrent visual feedback resulted in less regular sway compared to the EO and EC conditions. This effect was less pronounced in the CP group where posturograms were most regular in the EO condition rather than in the EC condition, as in the control group. Nonetheless, we concluded that CP children might benefit from therapies involving postural tasks with an external functional context for postural control

Transgenerational Effects of Heavy Metal Pollution on Immune Defense of the Blow Fly Protophormia terraenovae

Recently environmental conditions during early parental development have been found to have transgenerational effects on immunity and other condition-dependent traits. However, potential transgenerational effects of heavy metal pollution have not previously been studied. Here we show that direct exposure to heavy metal (copper) upregulates the immune system of the blow fly, Protophormia terraenovae, reared in copper contaminated food. In the second experiment, to test transgenerational effects of heavy metal, the parental generation of the P. terraenovae was reared in food supplemented with copper, and the immunocompetence of their offspring, reared on uncontaminated food, was measured. Copper concentration used in this study was, in the preliminary test, found to have no effect on mortality of the flies. Immunity was tested on the imago stage by measuring encapsulation response against an artificial antigen, nylon monofilament. We found that exposure to copper during the parental development stages through the larval diet resulted in immune responses that were still apparent in the next generation that was not exposed to the heavy metal. We found that individuals reared on copper-contaminated food developed more slowly compared with those reared on uncontaminated food. The treatment groups did not differ in their dry body mass. However, parental exposure to copper did not have an effect on the development time or body mass of their offspring. Our study suggests that heavy metal pollution has positive feedback effect on encapsulation response through generations which multiplies the harmful effects of heavy metal pollution in following generations

Regularity of center-of-pressure trajectories depends on the amount of attention invested in postural control

The influence of attention on the dynamical structure of postural sway was examined in 30 healthy young adults by manipulating the focus of attention. In line with the proposed direct relation between the amount of attention invested in postural control and regularity of center-of-pressure (COP) time series, we hypothesized that: (1) increasing cognitive involvement in postural control (i.e., creating an internal focus by increasing task difficulty through visual deprivation) increases COP regularity, and (2) withdrawing attention from postural control (i.e., creating an external focus by performing a cognitive dual task) decreases COP regularity. We quantified COP dynamics in terms of sample entropy (regularity), standard deviation (variability), sway-path length of the normalized posturogram (curviness), largest Lyapunov exponent (local stability), correlation dimension (dimensionality) and scaling exponent (scaling behavior). Consistent with hypothesis 1, standing with eyes closed significantly increased COP regularity. Furthermore, variability increased and local stability decreased, implying ineffective postural control. Conversely, and in line with hypothesis 2, performing a cognitive dual task while standing with eyes closed led to greater irregularity and smaller variability, suggesting an increase in the “efficiency, or “automaticity” of postural control”. In conclusion, these findings not only indicate that regularity of COP trajectories is positively related to the amount of attention invested in postural control, but also substantiate that in certain situations an increased internal focus may in fact be detrimental to postural control

"Zibaldone dolce amaro". Studio sulle lettere di Luigi Pulci.

L'elaborato si propone di studiare, con occhio critico volto a coglierne gli aspetti letterari, la raccolta delle lettere extravaganti di Luigi Pulci, scrittore del Quattrocento fiorentino, vissuto alla corte di Lorenzo de' Medici e autore di molte opere in volgare tra cui il famosissimo poema "Morgante". Lo studio si divide in due parti: nella prima, generale, le lettere saranno messe a confronto con altri famosi epistolari umanistici e rinascimentali che, per motivi diversi, possono fornirci alcune utili chiavi di lettura; nella seconda, più particolare, verranno analizzati alcuni motivi presenti nelle missive fino ad un commento possibilmente approfondito di alcune di esse