Léo at the Tarragon: Naturalizing the Coup

Rosa Laborde’s play Léo draws on the complex (Chilean and Latino) cultural memory of the 1973 coup that deposed the Salvador Allende government, but the debut production at Toronto’s Tarragon contains that memory to serve dominant cultural narratives. The Tarragon production of Léo—a play ostensibly ‘about’ Chile—is a clear example of how dominant cultural paradigms can persist across the borders of intercultural performance. I consider the ways in which text, production, supplementary material provided in the program, and the theatre’s public discourse work to appropriate a memory of rupture and reactivate a familiar vision of multicultural Canada. Résumé La pièce Léo de Rosa Laborde s’inspire de la mémoire culturelle complexe (chilienne et latino) du coup de 1973 qui a marqué la fin du règne de Salvador Allende. La première présentation de la pièce au Tarragon, à Toronto, restreint toutefois cette mémoire pour la mettre au service des récits culturels dominants. La production de Léo au Tarragon—une pièce portant ostensiblement sur le Chili— est un bon exemple de la manière dont les paradigmes de la culture dominante peuvent traverser les frontières de la performance inter-culturelle. Verdecchia examine les façons dont le texte, la production, les renseignements additionnels fournis dans le programme et le discours public tenu par le théâtre servent à s’approprier un moment de rupture et à réactiver une vision familière du multiculturalisme canadien

Identifying Architectural Technical Debt: Moving Forward

In software-intensive systems, technical debt is a metaphor encompassing design and implementation constructs that are used as expedients in the short term, but that hinder future maintainability and evolvability. Architectural technical debt, in turn, adopts such concept by considering sub-optimal architectural design and implementation choices that bring short-term benefits to the cost of the long-term gradual deterioration of the quality of the software architecture. Architectural technical debt is an active field of research. Nevertheless, how to accurately identify and manage architectural technical debt is still an open question. Our research aims to fill this gap. In particular, our goal is to: (i) consolidate the existing knowledge of architectural technical debt identification and its management in practice, (ii) conceive novel identification and management approaches built upon the existing state of the art techniques and industrial needs, and (iii) provide empirical evidence of architectural technical debt phenomena and assess the viability of the conceived approaches. As a result, we envision a sound methodology aimed to support software architects in the identification and management of architectural technical debt throughout the software development process

Behavioral management of headache in children and adolescents

Headache is the most frequent neurological symptom and the most prevalent pain in children and adolescents, and constitutes a serious health problem that may lead to impairment in several areas. Psychosocial factors, social environment, life events, school and family stressors are all closely related to headaches. A multidisciplinary strategy is fundamental in addressing headache in children and adolescents. Applying such a strategy can lead to reductions in frequency and severity of the pain, improving significantly the quality of life of these children.It has been demonstrated that behavioral intervention is highly effective, especially in the treatment of paediatric headache, and can enhance or replace pharmacotherapy, with the advantage of eliminating dangerous side effects and or reducing costs. Behavioral interventions appear to maximize long-term therapeutic benefits and improve compliance with pharmacological treatment, which has proven a significant problem with child and adolescent with headache.The goal of this review is to examine the existing literature on behavioral therapies used to treat headache in children and adolescents, and so provide an up-to-date picture of what behavioral therapy is and what its effectiveness is

Headache and alexithymia in children and adolescents: what Is the connection?

Background: Headache is one of the most common complaints in children and adolescents and comorbidity rates are very high and the major associated diseases are depression, anxiety, atopic disorders, sleep, and behavioral disorders. In recent years, it has been highlighted that difficulties regulating emotions such as alexithymia have also been associated with diagnosis of somatization. Methods: We carried out a mini review analyzing the relation between alexithymia and primary headache (e.g., migraine and tension type headache) in children and adolescents by synthesizing the relevant studies in the literature on PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. Search terms were "alexithymia" combined with the "primary headache," "migraine," "tension type headache," "children," and "adolescents." Results: All analyzed studies found higher levels of alexithymia in children and adolescents with headache than control groups but there are different opinions about the relationship between headache and alexithymia. For example, some studies suggest that the association between headache and alexithymia in children may be due to an incomplete development of emotive competency or a general immature cognitive development, instead other studies found a correlation between headache symptoms, insecure attachment, and alexithymia. There seems to be also differences between children with migraine compared to those with tension type headache (TTH). Conclusion: There are some studies on adults suffering from headache or migraine and alexithymia, but there is only a moderate amount of research on pediatric age with different opinions and theories about this relationship. Further studies on children and adolescents are necessary to effectively understand this relationship and to help children to reduce headache and improve emotional consciousness

Digging Deeper with Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy

Patients with neurological diseases are vulnerable to cerebral ischemia, which can lead to brain injury. In the intensive care unit (ICU), neuromonitoring techniques that can detect flow reductions would enable timely administration of therapies aimed at restoring adequate cerebral perfusion, thereby avoiding damage to the brain. However, suitable bedside neuromonitoring methods sensitive to changes of blood flow and/or oxygen metabolism have yet to be established. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a promising technique capable of non-invasively monitoring flow and oxygenation. Specifically, diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) and time-resolved (TR) NIRS can be used to monitor blood flow and tissue oxygenation, respectively, and combined to measuring oxidative metabolism. The work presented in this thesis focused on advancing a DCS/TR-NIRS hybrid system for acquiring these physiological measurements at the bedside. The application of NIRS for neuromonitoring is favourable in the neonatal ICU since the relatively thin scalp and skull of infants has minimal effect on the detected optical signal. Considering this application, the validation of a combined DCS/NIRS method for measuring the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2) was investigated in Chapter 2. Although perfusion changes measured by DCS have been confirmed by various flow modalities, characterization of photon scattering in the brain is not clearly understood. Chapter 3 presents the first DCS study conducted directly on exposed cortex to confirm that the Brownian motion model is the best flow model for characterizing the DCS signal. Furthermore, a primary limitation of DCS is signal contamination from extracerebral tissues in the adult head, causing CBF to be underestimated. In Chapter 4, a multi-layered model was implemented to separate signal contributions from scalp and brain; derived CBF changes were compared to computed tomography perfusion. Overall, this thesis advances DCS techniques by (i) quantifying cerebral oxygen metabolism, (ii) confirming the more appropriate flow model for analyzing DCS data and (iii) demonstrating the ability of DCS to measure CBF accurately despite the presence of a thick (1-cm) extracerebral layer. Ultimately, the work completed in this thesis should help with the development of a hybrid DCS/NIRS system suitable for monitoring cerebral hemodynamics and energy metabolism in critical-ill patients

Metacognition and headache: which Is the role in childhood and adolescence?

Headache, in particular migraine, is one of the most frequent neurological symptoms in children and adolescents and it affects about 60% of children and adolescents all over the world. Headache can affect several areas of child’s functioning, such as school, physical activities, peer, and family relationship. The global and severe burden of this disease requires a multidisciplinary strategy and an effective treatment addressed all of the patient’s needs and based on cutting-edge scientific research. In recent years, research has focused on cognitive factors specifically in functions called metacognitive processes. Metacognition can be defined as the knowledge, beliefs, and cognitive processes involved in monitoring, control, and assessment of cognition. Metacognition seems to be closely related to the ability of theory of mind, the ability to infer, and reason about the mental states of other people in order to predict and explain own behavior. Recent studies found a relationship between metacognitive skills and anxiety, depression, motivation, academic performance, human social interactions, and stress symptoms. This relationship is very interesting for headache treatment, because these factors are the most commonly reported triggers in this disorder and there is a high comorbidity with anxiety and depression in children and adolescents with headache. So, headache and these comorbidities, in particular anxiety and depression, may have in common persistent and maladaptive patterns of thinking which are related to maladaptive metacognitive beliefs. Further research should assess metacognitive processes of children and adolescents with headache in order to increase their ability to control their own cognitive processes and consequently monitor factors which may trigger the attacks

Etude de Faisabilité du Programme D'appui à la Société Civile en Côte D'ivoire

The report provides information about the program which is supposed to help civil society in Côte d'Ivoire