Music and Countercultures in Italy: the Neapolitan Scene

Neapolitan Song is recognized as one of the most important repertoires of songs in the world and one of the first examples of popular music. Yet, in the “60s, when the young Neapolitan musicians tried to absorb and develop the countercultural trends of the time which were spreading in Italy, such a repertoire seemed like an enemy on their way. This essay tells how the Neapolitan music of the last fifty years had to discard or reshape the classic Neapolitan Song in order to fight its hegemony and find its way to modernity in a country that was changing at fast speed. It is only after this work of “deconstruction” that Neapolitan Song was recovered and re-accepted, boasting now a new generation of enthusiastic scholars and performers.La chanson napolitaine est reconnue comme l'un des plus importants répertoires de chansons dans le monde ainsi que comme l'un des tous premiers exemples de musique populaire. Cependant, dans les années 1960 alors que les jeunes musiciens napolitains essayaient d'absorber et de développer les tendances contre-culturelles se développant sur l'ensemble du territoire italien à l'époque, un tel répertoire semblait se dresser en ennemi sur leur chemin. Cet article montre comment la musique napolitaine des cinquante dernières années a du s'écarter ou remodeler la chanson napolitaine classique afin de combattre son hégémonie et trouver son propre chemin, dans un pays changeant à vitesse grand V. Ce n'est qu'après un travail de « déconstruction » que la chanson napolitaine fut reprise et acceptée, enorgueillissant une nouvelle génération de chercheurs et de musiciens enthousiastes

Musique et contre-cultures en Italie : la scène napolitaine

La chanson napolitaine est reconnue comme l'un des plus importants répertoires de chansons dans le monde ainsi que comme l'un des tous premiers exemples de musique populaire. Cependant, dans les années 1960 alors que les jeunes musiciens napolitains essayaient d'absorber et de développer les tendances contre-culturelles se développant sur l'ensemble du territoire italien à l'époque, un tel répertoire semblait se dresser en ennemi sur leur chemin. Cet article montre comment la musique napolitaine des cinquante dernières années a du s'écarter ou remodeler la chanson napolitaine classique afin de combattre son hégémonie et trouver son propre chemin, dans un pays changeant à vitesse grand V. Ce n'est qu'après un travail de « déconstruction » que la chanson napolitaine fut reprise et acceptée, enorgueillissant une nouvelle génération de chercheurs et de musiciens enthousiastes.Neapolitan Song is recognized as one of the most important repertoires of songs in the world and one of the first examples of popular music. Yet, in the 1960s, when the young Neapolitan musicians tried to absorb and develop the countercultural trends of the time which were spreading in Italy, such a repertoire seemed like an enemy on their way. This essay tells how the Neapolitan music of the last fifty years had to discard or reshape the classic Neapolitan Song in order to fight its hegemony and find its way to modernity in a country that was changing at fast speed. It is only after this work of ‘deconstruction’ that Neapolitan Song was recovered and re-accepted, boasting now a new generation of enthusiastic scholars and performers

The bone marrow niche landscape: a journey through aging, extrinsic and intrinsic stressors in the haemopoietic milieu

Inflammation and its effects in the bone marrow microenvironment represent a paradigmatic condition in which the hematopoietic niche and the immune systems, thought to properly sustain blood cell production and distinguish between friend and foe, can actively sustain a corrupted neighborhood within a chronic aberrant inflamed state. The bone marrow niche hijacks the physiologic hematopoiesis. The interactions between the hematopoietic stem cells and the niche in the bone marrow are critical determinants of quiescence. We examined several approaches to confront the available evidence; three key points emerged, pointing to the chronic inflammation process, especially the chronic infection and systemic inflammatory states, as leading causes of hematopoietic stem cell depletion. Clonal hematopoiesis, defined as a relative expansion of individual clones, is caused by somatic alterations in essential hematopoietic genes, which increase stem cell fitness. Moreover, terminal differentiation plays a significant role in progenitor loss and inflammatory signaling, promoting clonal selection and clonal hematopoiesis conditions. Specific myeloid malignancies as paradigmatic examples are discussed as a condition associated with inflammation, including the 5q-syndrome, Philadelphia negative myeloproliferative neoplasms, and chronic myeloid leukemia. Aging with increased fitness and hematopoietic stem cell attrition, extrinsic stress, enhanced stressor-specific fitness, and intrinsic defect across the hematopoietic process represent the route for novel insights in defective hematopoiesis. The discussion in this review also points out that the hematopoietic niches' inflammatory stimulation may affect differentiation patterns and the function of downstream cells

Protein Alignment Systolic Array Throughput Optimization

Protein comparison is gaining importance year after year since it has been demonstrated that biologists can find cor- relation between different species, or genetic mutations that can lead to cancer and genetic diseases. Protein sequence alignment is the most computational intensive task when performing protein comparison. In order to speed-up alignment, dedicated processors that can perform different computations in parallel have been designed. Among them, the best performance have been achieved using Systolic Arrays. However, when the Processing Elements of the Systolic Array have an internal loop, performance could be highly reduced. In this work we present an architectural strategy to address this problem applying pipeline interleaving; this strategy is applied to a Systolic Array for Smith Waterman algorithm that we designed. Results encourage the adoption of pipeline interleaving for parallel circuits with loop based Processing Elements. We demonstrate that important benefits in terms of higher operating frequency can be derived without so relevant costs as increased complexity, area and power required

Quantifying Forbush Decrease with a Numerical Model Evaluation

Since its launch, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02) has emerged as a cornerstone for precise cosmic-ray (CR) spectra measurements, fostering diverse scientific advancements. However, challenges arise at lower energies due to temporal variations in solar activity, impacting CR intensity assessments. Notably, recent daily flux measurements enable the exploration of solar perturbations, such as Coronal Mass Ejections, unveiling Forbush effects at varying particle energies. This study presents a comparison of Forbush decreases observed by AMS-02 with predictions derived from numerical models. By scrutinizing multiple instances, we seek to enhance our understanding of the particle propagation in the interplanetary medium. The findings contribute to improve the reliability of numerical models to interpret AMS-02 observations in the context of solar phenomena

Back-Reaction of Super-Hubble Cosmological Perturbations Beyond Perturbation Theory

We discuss the effect of super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations on the locally measured Hubble expansion rate. We consider a large bare cosmological constant in the early universe in the presence of scalar field matter (the dominant matter component), which would lead to a scale-invariant primordial spectrum of cosmological fluctuations. Using the leading order gradient expansion we show that the expansion rate measured by a (secondary) clock field which is not comoving with the dominant matter component obtains a negative contribution from infrared fluctuations, a contribution whose absolute value increases in time. This is the same effect which a decreasing cosmological constant would produce. This supports the conclusion that infrared fluctuations lead to a dynamical relaxation of the cosmological constant. Our analysis does not make use of any perturbative expansion in the amplitude of the inhomogeneities.Comment: 9 page

Cancer-Associated Angiogenesis: The Endothelial Cell as a Checkpoint for Immunological Patrolling

Cancer-associated neo vessels’ formation acts as a gatekeeper that orchestrates the entrance and egress of patrolling immune cells within the tumor milieu. This is achieved, in part, via the directed chemokines’ expression and cell adhesion molecules on the endothelial cell surface that attract and retain circulating leukocytes. The crosstalk between adaptive immune cells and the cancer endothelium is thus essential for tumor immune surveillance and the success of immune-based therapies that harness immune cells to kill tumor cells. This review will focus on the biology of the endothelium and will explore the vascular-specific molecular mediators that control the recruitment, retention, and trafficking of immune cells that are essential for effective antitumor immunity. The literature revision will also explore how abnormalities in the tumor endothelium impair crosstalk with adaptive immune cells and how targeting these abnormalities can improve the success of immune-based therapies for different malignancies, with a particular focus on the paradigmatic example represented by multiple myeloma. We also generated and provide two original bio-informatic analyses, in order to sketch the physiopathology underlying the endothelial–neoplastic interactions in an easier manner, feeding into a vicious cycle propagating disease progression and highlighting novel pathways that might be exploited therapeutically