Visual Methodologies and Geography's education in the pandemic time: notes on geopolitics of migration in the "Mediterranean Complex"

The relationship between Geography and the Visual has always been strong intertwined. As it is true that Geography has always operates through images (in the form of pictures, creative representations and above all cartographies), in the last two years, with the distance learning due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, this phenomenon has not only increased, but it also became necessary. "The classroom as the most radical space", in the words of bell hooks, had to turn into a virtual space, where images have a fundamental role in the teaching/learning process. This paper wants to analyse the relationship between Geography and the Visual by analysing three images we used in the lessons of the course Geopolitics of Migration at the University of Palermo during the academic year 2020–2021, that speak about the "Mediterranean Complex". With this expression, inspired by Mirzoeff's work, I will briefly focus on the clash between dominant visuality and the counter-visualities emerging from the Mediterranean Sea, a particular sea-space where on the one hand, violent geopolitics daily act against migrants' crossing; on the other hand, new imaginative geographies emerge against coloniality devices of power and knowledge. A further reflection will be dedicated to the use of these images as a didactic tool. Why do we use these images? What do they tell us? Which one is the relationship between our increasingly digital classrooms and these images? If it is true that the pandemic phenomenon is acting as a laboratory of experimentation and acceleration, how is the visual nature of geography changing and participating to the construction of our knowledge? This contribution is a first attempt to reflect about those questions through the visuality and the counter-visualities of the "Mediterranean complex"

Expanding on the involvement of primary cilia in neurological function through observing EEG/EMG changes in different genotypic mice

Primary cilia have been known to regulate neurological functions, as primary cilia exist on astrocytes and neurons in the mature brain. More is being discovered about primary cilia and their role in the vertebrate nervous system; however, little is known about their functions and molecular pathways in the mature brain. There also lacks methods of diagnosis for primary cilia-related defects and diseases. The purpose of this project was to provide more information on the involvement of cilia in the neurological functions and offer a potential means for diagnosis of cilia-related disorders by comparing the EEG and EMG signals of wildtype mice with the signals of IFT88 knockout and Arl13b-mCherry transgenic mice. The study was successful in identifying several potential points of comparison in the EEG/EMG plots of wildtype, IFT88 knockout, and Arl13b-mCherry transgenic mice. More data must be collected and analyzed to confirm these findings; however, the comparisons found in this project could be crucial in furthering knowledge of how we understand and study primary cilia and how they affect neurological functions and patterns in humans

Posizionamenti transfemministi. Saperi situati e pratiche spaziali nel movimento Non Una di Meno

The aim of this paper is to analyse, through the toolbox of gender geography, the methodology of positionality and situated knowledge. The article examines some spatial practices of the transfeminist movement Non Una di Meno that involve us both as researchers and activists. The different forms of territorialisation and ways of “doing with” the space of the movement, are here presented through the specific cases of the demonstrations organised during the Covid-19 pandemic on the 25th of November 2020 and 8th March 2021. This enables us to present the methodology of positionality, and to analyse how feminist spatial practices can be the object of research and vice versa

Geografie more-than-wet del Mediterraneo Nero: marginalità, eccedenze, (ri)gener-azioni

Interweaving the production on the contemporary Black Mediterranean with the recent Oceanic Turn (Peters, Anderson, Davies, Steinberg, 2022), which repositions the sea from the margin to the centre of the geographic discipline, this specific sea-space emerges as a space co-composed of two fundamental elements: the trans-colonial (Sharpe, 2016) wake (Harrison, 2018) that connects the pre-modern Black Medi-terranean to the Black Atlantic of modernity and the contemporary Black Mediterranean; the waves (de Spuches, Palermo, 2020; Palermo, 2023), matter and metaphor of moving bodies of challenge, resistance, conflicts. The latter, specifically, become re-genera(c)tions from the margin to im-agine and practice possible trans-Mediterranean alliances, thus revealing how thinking with the sea can function as a decolonial tool for decentral-ising the gaze on a space of colonial margins production such as the Black Mediterranean

Under her eye: immaginari e pratiche spaziali transfemministe a Palermo

L’articolo analizza la performance organizzata da Non Una Di Meno-Palermo nella giornata contro la violenza maschile sulle donne e di genere 2020. Nel corso del presidio, lo spazio urbano è stato risignificato da un’‘Ancella’, riferimento al romanzo e alla serie The handmaid’s tale (Atwood, 1985). Utilizzata più volte dai movimenti transfemministi per rappresentare il controllo e il disciplinamento del corpo femminile, la rappresentazione dell’Ancella assume ulteriori significati nel contesto della pandemia del Covid-19. Il contributo indaga la performance analizzandone da una parte gli aspetti spaziali, in relazione alle altre forme di spazializzazione del movimento; dall’altra gli immaginari (trans)femministi mobilitati, tra seduzioni del pop e risignificazioni. L’obiettivo è comprendere quali sono i significati e le alleanze che il movimento sta costruendo attraverso questo tipo di immaginari e pratiche spaziali, individuando le specificità del caso palermitano.This article analyses the performance organised by Non Una Di Meno-Palermo for the 2020 International Day for the elimination of Violence against Women and gender-based. During the demonstration, the urban space has been re-signified by a ‘Handmaid’, with regard to the novel and the TV-series The handmaid’s tale (Atwood, 1985). Used many times by the transfemminist movements to represent women’s body control and discipline, the Handmaid representation takes on further meanings in the Covid-19 pandemic framework. This paper examines the performance by analysing on the one hand its spatial aspects, in connection with other forms of movements’ spatialisation; on the other hand, the mobilised (trans)feminist imaginaries, between pop seduction and resignifications. The aim is to understand which are the meanings and the alliances the movement is building through this kind of spatial imaginaries and practices, by identifying the specificities in the Palermo case

Laboratorio Pandemia. Genere, riproduzione, spazio domestico

Mettendo al lavoro il metodo di una critica femminista che parte da Marx per andare oltre, Claudia Borgia e Gabriella Palermo guardano alle trasformazioni della sfera riproduttiva accelerate dalla pandemia. Richiamano un processo complessivo di ristrutturazione della riproduzione che investe lo spazio domestico e il suo esterno, il lavoro salariato e quello non retribuito. Nella complessità delle trasformazioni in atto, scelgono di indagare due aspetti specifici: «le implicazioni politiche e sociali di una pandemia del tutto scaricata sui cosiddetti lavori essenziali» e «le conseguenze del doppio carico di lavoro sulle spalle delle donne, divenuto estenuante». A partire da qui individuano alcune linea di analisi da sviluppare in avanti.Putting to work the method of a feminist critique that starts from Marx to go further, Claudia Borgia and Gabriella Palermo look at the transformations of the reproductive sphere accelerated by the pandemic. They recall an overall process of restructuring of reproduction that affects the domestic space and its exterior, wage and unpaid work. In the complexity of the transformations taking place, they choose to investigate two specific aspects: "the political and social implications of a pandemic completely unloaded on the so-called essential jobs" and "the consequences of the double workload on women's shoulders, which has become exhausting". From here they identify some lines of analysis to be developed forward

Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes

Data deposition: Data, code, and materials are available at the Open Science Framework, https://osf.io/35zf8/?view_only=e76c6755dcea4be2adc5b075cae896e8. The face impression tests can be viewed at https://www.testable.org/experiment/855/674205/start. This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1920131117/-/DCSupplemental.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Safety of Rotavirus Vaccination in Preterm Infants Admitted in Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Sicily, Italy: A Multicenter Observational Study

Rotavirus (RV) is among the most common vaccine-preventable diseases in children under five years of age. Despite the severity of rotavirus pathology in early childhood, rotavirus vaccination for children admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), who are often born preterm and with various previous illnesses, is not performed. This multicenter, 3-year project aims to evaluate the safety of RV vaccine administration within the six main neonatal intensive care units of the Sicilian Region to preterm infants. Methods: Monovalent live attenuated anti-RV vaccination (RV1) was administered from April 2018 to December 2019 to preterm infants with gestational age ≥ 28 weeks. Vaccine administrations were performed in both inpatient and outpatient hospital settings as a post discharge follow-up (NICU setting) starting at 6 weeks of age according to the official immunization schedule. Any adverse events (expected, unexpected, and serious) were monitored from vaccine administration up to 14 days (first assessment) and 28 days (second assessment) after each of the two scheduled vaccine doses. Results: At the end of December 2019, 449 preterm infants were vaccinated with both doses of rotavirus vaccine within the six participating Sicilian NICUs. Mean gestational age in weeks was 33.1 (±3.8 SD) and the first dose of RV vaccine was administered at 55 days (±12.9 SD) on average. The mean weight at the first dose was 3388 (SD ± 903) grams. Only 0.6% and 0.2% of infants reported abdominal colic and fever above 38.5 ◦C in the 14 days after the first dose, respectively. Overall, 1.9% EAEs were observed at 14 days and 0.4% at 28 days after the first/second dose administration. Conclusions: Data obtained from this study confirm the safety of the monovalent rotavirus vaccine even in preterm infants with gestational age ≥ 28 weeks, presenting an opportunity to improve the vaccination offer both in Sicily and in Italy by protecting the most fragile infants who are more at risk of contracting severe rotavirus gastroenteritis and nosocomial RV infection

The rapid spread of SARS-COV-2 Omicron variant in Italy reflected early through wastewater surveillance

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emerged in South Africa in November 2021, and has later been identified worldwide, raising serious concerns. A real-time RT-PCR assay was designed for the rapid screening of the Omicron variant, targeting characteristic mutations of the spike gene. The assay was used to test 737 sewage samples collected throughout Italy (19/21 Regions) between 11 November and 25 December 2021, with the aim of assessing the spread of the Omicron variant in the country. Positive samples were also tested with a real-time RT-PCR developed by the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), and through nested RT-PCR followed by Sanger sequencing. Overall, 115 samples tested positive for Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant. The first occurrence was detected on 7 December, in Veneto, North Italy. Later on, the variant spread extremely fast in three weeks, with prevalence of positive wastewater samples rising from 1.0% (1/104 samples) in the week 5-11 December, to 17.5% (25/143 samples) in the week 12-18, to 65.9% (89/135 samples) in the week 19-25, in line with the increase in cases of infection with the Omicron variant observed during December in Italy. Similarly, the number of Regions/Autonomous Provinces in which the variant was detected increased from one in the first week, to 11 in the second, and to 17 in the last one. The presence of the Omicron variant was confirmed by the JRC real-time RT-PCR in 79.1% (91/115) of the positive samples, and by Sanger sequencing in 66% (64/97) of PCR amplicons. In conclusion, we designed an RT-qPCR assay capable to detect the Omicron variant, which can be successfully used for the purpose of wastewater-based epidemiology. We also described the history of the introduction and diffusion of the Omicron variant in the Italian population and territory, confirming the effectiveness of sewage monitoring as a powerful surveillance tool