Submovements During Reaching Movements after Stroke

Neurological deficits after cerebrovascular accidents very frequently disrupt the kinematics of voluntary movements with the consequent impact in daily life activities. Robotic methodologies enable the quantitative characterization of specific control deficits needed to understand the basis of functional impairments and to design effective rehabilitation therapies. In a group of right handed chronic stroke survivors (SS) with right side hemiparesis, intact proprioception, and differing levels of motor impairment, we used a robotic manipulandum to study right arm function during discrete point-to-point reaching movements and reciprocal out-and-back movements to visual targets. We compared these movements with those of neurologically intact individuals (NI). We analyzed the presence of secondary submovements in the initial (i.e. outward) trajectory portion of the two tasks and found that the SS with severe impairment (F

The globalisation of Italian agriculture. Transformations of migrant labour composition in agriculture in Trentino

The cultivation of apples is one of the principal eco- nomic activities in Trentino, which is responsible for 25% of Italian apple production and 4% of European apple production. The industry is structurally based on migrant work, especially from Eastern European coun- tries in the EU. This model has come up against obstacles due to EU migrant workers redrawing their trajecto- ries: They now tend to remain in their country of origin or move towards central European countries, where they find better wages and working conditions. This is also due to the inadequacy of Italian migration poli- cies, which make it difficult for employers to recruit migrant workers. As a result, employers started to recruit refugees and asylum seekers from countries in the sub- Saharan and Indian subcontinent who had recently arrived in Trentino. This article analyses these trans- formations and the trend of ‘refugeeisation’ process of the agricultural workforce, as well as the partial replace- ment of seasonal workers in Trentino. It then focuses on the impact of the pandemic on international recruitment and on the organisation of the migrant workforce

Bioethics aspects in the administration of clinical information by students of Dentistry

Objetivo: Evaluar el proceso de construcción de competencias vinculadas con la formación bioética. Métodos: Se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo sobre variables: “aspectos legales de la información clínica” y “implementación del derecho a la información clínica”. Se registró una encuesta cerrada, voluntaria, anónima a una muestra azarosa de 300 estudiantes avanzados de la Carrera de Odontología de la FOUNLP, Argentina. El muestreo comprendió 150 alumnos de cuarto año (Grupo A) y 150 de quinto año (Grupo B). Los análisis estadísticos fueron realizados con Epi Info ™ Versión 3.3.2 y EPIDAT 3.1.Facultad de Odontologí

The repetitive structure of DNA clamps: An overlooked protein tandem repeat

Structured tandem repeats proteins (STRPs) are a specific kind of tandem repeat proteins characterized by a modular and repetitive three-dimensional structure arrangement. The majority of STRPs adopt solenoid structures, but with the increasing availability of experimental structures and high-quality predicted structural models, more STRP folds can be characterized. Here, we describe “Box repeats”, an overlooked STRP fold present in the DNA sliding clamp processivity factors, which has eluded classification although structural data has been available since the late 1990s. Each Box repeat is a β⍺βββ module of about 60 residues, which forms a class V “beads-on-a-string” type STRP. The number of repeats present in processivity factors is organism dependent. Monomers of PCNA proteins in both Archaea and Eukarya have 4 repeats, while the monomers of bacterial beta-sliding clamps have 6 repeats. This new repeat fold has been added to the RepeatsDB database, which now provides structural annotation for 66 Box repeat proteins belonging to different organisms, including viruses

Critical assessment of protein intrinsic disorder prediction (CAID) - Results of round 2

Protein intrinsic disorder (ID) is a complex and context-dependent phenomenon that covers a continuum between fully disordered states and folded states with long dynamic regions. The lack of a ground truth that fits all ID flavors and the potential for order-to-disorder transitions depending on specific conditions makes ID prediction challenging. The CAID2 challenge aimed to evaluate the performance of different prediction methods across different benchmarks, leveraging the annotation provided by the DisProt database, which stores the coordinates of ID regions when there is experimental evidence in the literature. The CAID2 challenge demonstrated varying performance of different prediction methods across different benchmarks, highlighting the need for continued development of more versatile and efficient prediction software. Depending on the application, researchers may need to balance performance with execution time when selecting a predictor. Methods based on AlphaFold2 seem to be good ID predictors but they are better at detecting absence of order rather than ID regions as defined in DisProt. The CAID2 predictors can be freely used through the CAID Prediction Portal, and CAID has been integrated into OpenEBench, which will become the official platform for running future CAID challenges

CAID prediction portal: A comprehensive service for predicting intrinsic disorder and binding regions in proteins

Intrinsic disorder (ID) in proteins is well-established in structural biology, with increasing evidence for its involvement in essential biological processes. As measuring dynamic ID behavior experimentally on a large scale remains difficult, scores of published ID predictors have tried to fill this gap. Unfortunately, their heterogeneity makes it difficult to compare performance, confounding biologists wanting to make an informed choice. To address this issue, the Critical Assessment of protein Intrinsic Disorder (CAID) benchmarks predictors for ID and binding regions as a community blind-test in a standardized computing environment. Here we present the CAID Prediction Portal, a web server executing all CAID methods on user-defined sequences. The server generates standardized output and facilitates comparison between methods, producing a consensus prediction highlighting high-confidence ID regions. The website contains extensive documentation explaining the meaning of different CAID statistics and providing a brief description of all methods. Predictor output is visualized in an interactive feature viewer and made available for download in a single table, with the option to recover previous sessions via a private dashboard. The CAID Prediction Portal is a valuable resource for researchers interested in studying ID in proteins. The server is available at the URL: https://caid.idpcentral.org

The southernmost beech (Fagus sylvatica) forests of Europe (Mount Etna, Italy): ecology, structural stand-type diversity and management implications

The southernmost European beech forests are located in the upper forest vegetation belt on Mount Etna volcano. Their standstructural patterns were analysed to assess the effects of the site-ecological factors and previous management practices on the forest structure. Five main structural-silvicultural types were identified among the main beech forest types: coppice, highmountain coppice (HMCo), high forest, coppice in conversion to high-forest and non-formal stand. A detailed standstructural analysis was carried out through measured dendrometric parameters and derived structural characters linked to both the horizontal and the vertical profiles. Plant regeneration processes were also assessed, and several biodiversity indicators were calculated. The collected data indicate a high variability of beech stand structures in relation to the heterogeneity of the site-ecological characteristics as well as to the effects of both natural and anthropic disturbance factors. The occurrence of particular stand structures along the altitude gradient on Mount Etna is evident. It is especially visible in the multi-stemmed HMCos in relation to the changing, and increasingly limiting, ecological factors, although at higher altitudes historical anthropic actions (felling) also have had an influence. Inside the Mediterranean area, these stands highlight their ecological marginality, in terms of both latitude and altitude, especially regarding current climate change processes