Tutti giù per terra (all fall down) – An active course to discover earthquakes topics

Teaching topics involving risk and safety, and earthquake, requires a full involvement. Otherwise, it can be useless. A full involvement means an experience rewarding the person in his/her integrity, starting from practice to go beyond it, understanding phaenomena not using science as a form of rational believe, working on the different ingenuous idea that everyone has of the earthquake, staying related to the social connections of the learning group. ConUnGioco developed, starting from these objectives, "Tutti giù per terra", an active course for discover, for the Italian INGV: the course, whose title is inspired to the last line ("All fall down", in italian, "Tutti giù per terra") of the child singing game "Ring a ring'o roses" (in Italian: girotondo), is based on an interactive and participative approach. Following the active course, partecipants can experiment feeling and emotions related to the experience of an earthquake (through simulation tools). Therefore, starting from the questions that the simulated experience raised in everyone, the group will search its own answers, investigating theorical knowledges with scientific experiments and games, staying in touch with explanations coming from legends, history and religion. The course will end in the area of concrete actions and possible reactions to an earthquake, talking about preventions and solutions, individually and as a community

267 Occupation and Multiple Sclerosis: an Italian case-control study

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The Survival of Non-capitalism

This article explores the importance of non-capitalist space within the global political economy. The issue of how to categorise and understand space in so-called peripheral regions such as Latin America has been a contentious one. Whilst many radical analyses have focused on the dynamics of capitalism in relation to the geography of development, explaining how it has been able to survive and grow, this article makes the case for a more multi-linear theoretical framework with which to view the socio-economic landscape. This is inspired not only by the later writings of Marx but also the specific Marxian class analysis of those involved in Rethinking Marxism. Via a focus on Oaxaca in southern Mexico, this article highlights both the survival and the recreation of spaces of non-capitalism, and provides an argument for why we should consider these to be important for transformative action more broadly, whilst also discussing their potential limitations

A Note on Probabilistic and Geometric Shaping for the AWGN Channel

When considering coded modulation schemes for the AWGN channel, two main practical limitations prevent achieving channel capacity, namely the need to use a finite constellation and coding inefficiencies. Constellation shaping was given new impetus in recent works by Böcherer et al., which combined probabilistically shaped ASK constellations with LDPC coding. One open question is how far their results are from optimal solutions based on the use of finite constellations. We investigate this issue and show through experimental analysis that most of the loss is due to inefficient coding design and little benefits should be expected by adding two-dimensional geometric shaping

Impairment in dating and retrieving remote events in patients with early Parkinson's disease.

Remote memory has been studied in a group of 25 non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease and their performance has been compared with that of 22 healthy control subjects. Only patients who scored > or = 27 on the mini mental state examination and with no anticholinergic treatment were included in the sample. A remote memory questionnaire was given, to evaluate memory for public events that occurred from 1966 to 1990. Each event was probed with five questions concerning its content and one for the date. Compared with healthy subjects, patients with Parkinson's disease were significantly impaired both in recalling the content and in dating remote events. These results support the claim that remote memory in patients with Parkinson's disease is disrupted independently of dementia. This impairment might result from a dysfunction at the level of the circuit connecting the basal ganglia to the frontal lobes

A contemporary pathology of science

A contemporary pathology of science is outlined. This pathology suggests that “previous knowledge” drastically limits innovative thinking in science. In very raw “Bayesian” terms it is affirmed that a too rich and flexible a priori knowledge is detrimental to the appreciation of novelty coming from experimental results by both lowering the relative weight assigned to a posteriori contrasting evidence and adapting potentially revolutionary findings to an already existing frame

Impairment in dating and retrieving remote events in patients with early Parkinson's disease

Remote memory has been studied in a group of 25 non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease and their performance has been compared with that of 22 healthy control subjects. Only patients who scored greater than or equal to 27 on the mini mental state examination and with no anticholinergic treatment were included in the sample. A remote memory questionnaire was given, to evaluate memory for public events that occurred from 1966 to 1990. Each event was probed with five questions concerning its content and one for the date. Compared with healthy subjects, patients with Parkinson's disease were significantly impaired both in recalling the content and in dating remote events. These results support the claim that remote memory in patients with Parkinson's disease is disrupted independently of dementia. This impairment might result from a dysfunction at the level of the circuit connecting the basal ganglia to the frontal lobes

May plasma cholesterol level be considered a neoplastic marker in liver disease from cirrhosis to hepatocellular carcinoma?

Background. Although the role of cholesterol in tumourigenesis is unclear; it is used by the tumoural cells for biosynthetic processes and for steroid synthesis. Aim, To accertain whether plasma cholesterol levels might be a reliable neoplastic marker of a developing hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with liver cirrhosis. Patients, Plasma cholesterol has been studied in 287 liver cirrhosis patients without hepatocellular carcinoma and in 132 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Results, Cholesterol (mean +/- SEM) was higher in hepatocellular carcinoma patients when compared with age-, sex- and Child-Pugh class matched cirrhotic controls. In Child-Pugh class A, B and C with uncomplicated liver cirrhosis these values were, respectively 142.0 +/- 2.5, 117.3 +/- 2.5 97.4 +/- 2.9 vs 172.5 +/- 4.7, 163.8 +/- 7.9, 153.5 +/- 8.0 +/- mg/dl in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (p<0.001). A significant increase of cholesterol (p<0.001) has been reported in the patients with liver cirrhosis when complicated by hepatocellular carcinoma and it was not related to cholestasis. Conclusions. This observation seems to suggest that the enhanced cholesterol biosynthesis by tumoural cells leads to a rise in plasma cholesterol of patients with cancer and, moreover that, this increase may be used as a neoplastic marker indicating the development of a tumour in patients with liver cirrhosis