Corrispondenze e interazioni tra suono spazio e corpo, strategie per un design sonoro dello spazio

Con il diffondersi di tecnologie sofisticate e al contempo facilmente accessibili per la registrazione e la riproduzione surround del suono, emergono pratiche sonore eterogenee in cui l'impatto e la complessit\ue0 della dimensione spaziale diventano parte integrante del processo di progettazione. Pertanto, grazie alla possibilit\ue0 di ricreare un sound field sempre pi\uf9 simile a quello che ci circonda, l\u2019esperienza dello spazio e\u2019 espansa (dal suono) e al contempo predeterminata da risultati matematici, strategie compositive e modalit\ue0 di ascolto specifiche. Si evidenzia, quindi come le tecnologie di integrazione del suono e dello spazio implichino una riconfigurazione delle interazioni tra spazio, suono e corpo. La proliferazione di questi metodi e sistemi conduce cos\uec alla necessit\ue0 di una riflessione ontologica sulla natura stessa dello spazio, sulla sua interrelazione con lo spazio fisico di proiezione e con il corpo. La tesi qui di seguito presentata, si basa sugli approcci tra teoria e pratica specifici della musica elettroacustica, della sound art e del sound design, mirando per\uf2 ad individuare le corrispondenze gi\ue0 esistenti e a delinearne di nuovi implementando un quadro transdisciplinare. L\u2019analisi si inserisce in quella sfera relativamente recente di opere e autori che cercano di orientarsi al di l\ue0 del paradigma binario di soggetto e oggetto, spazio e tempo, natura e cultura, mente e corpo, umano e non umano, reale e virtuale, per abbracciare una prospettiva ecologica che tiene conto della complessit\ue0 delle relazioni dinamiche e dell\u2019influenza reciproca tra gli elementi. La mappatura realizzata permette dunque di formulare un modello teorico tripartito, basato sul macro-concetto di spazio complesso, che a sua volta genera uno spazio potenziale da cui, a seconda delle interazioni attivate tra spazio corpo e suono, sono generate tre diverse tipologie di spazio. Per verificare il modello formulato, le tre categorie spaziali sono accompagnate da relativi esempi sonori. Il contesto cos\uec delineato contribuisce a creare un terreno fertile per ripensare i concetti e sviluppare strategie alternative per la pratica della composizione spaziale sonora. Si propongono infine due prototipi in via di sperimentazione: il primo legato alla stimolazione della sensazione di spazialit\ue0\u2019, attraverso una composizione creata per mezzo di uno specifico sistema di spazializzazione 3D, mentre il secondo e\u2019 un progetto collaborativo che riguarda l\u2019investigazione della dimensione sonora nello spazio urbano

Effectiveness of osteopathic interventions in chronic non-specific low back pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a frequent cause of disability and it represents a medical, social and economic burden globally. Therefore, we assessed effectiveness of osteopathic interventions in the management of NS-CLBP for pain and functional status. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted. Findings were reported following the PRISMA statement. Six databases were searched for RCTs. Studies were independently assessed using a standardized form. Each article was assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) tool. Effect size (ES) were calculated at post-treatment and at 12 weeks' follow up. We used GRADE to assess quality of evidence. Results: 10 articles were included. Studies investigated osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT, n = 6), myofascial release (MFR, n = 2), craniosacral treatment (CST, n = 1) and osteopathic visceral manipulation (OVM, n = 1). None of the study was completely judged at low RoB. Osteopathy revealed to be more effective than control interventions in pain reduction (ES: -0.59; 95% CI: -0.81, -0.36; P < 0.00,001) and in improving functional status (ES: -0.42; 95% 95% CI: -0.68, -0.15; P = 0.002). Moderate-quality evidence suggested that MFR is more effective than control treatments in pain reduction (ES: -0.69; 95% CI: -1.05, -0.33; P = 0.0002), even at follow-up (ES: -0.73; 95% CI: -1.09, -0.37; P < 0.0001). Low-quality evidence suggested superiority of OMT in pain reduction (ES: -0.57; 95% CI: -0.90, -0.25; P = 0.001) and in changing functional status (ES: -0.34; 95% CI: -0.65, -0.03; P = 0.001). Very low-quality evidence suggested that MFR is more effective than control interventions in functional improvements (ES: -0.73; 95% CI: -1.25, -0.21; P = 0.006). Conclusion: Results strengthen evidence that osteopathy is effective in pain levels and functional status improvements in NS-CLBP patients. MFR reported better level of evidence for pain reduction if compared to other interventions. Further high-quality RCTs, comparing different osteopathic modalities, are recommended to produce better-quality evidence

Evaluation of Arm Swing Features and Asymmetry during Gait in Parkinson’s Disease Using the Azure Kinect Sensor

Arm swinging is a typical feature of human walking: Continuous and rhythmic movement of the upper limbs is important to ensure postural stability and walking efficiency. However, several factors can interfere with arm swings, making walking more risky and unstable: These include aging, neurological diseases, hemiplegia, and other comorbidities that affect motor control and coordination. Objective assessment of arm swings during walking could play a role in preventing adverse consequences, allowing appropriate treatments and rehabilitation protocols to be activated for recovery and improvement. This paper presents a system for gait analysis based on Microsoft Azure Kinect DK sensor and its body-tracking algorithm: It allows noninvasive full-body tracking, thus enabling simultaneous analysis of different aspects of walking, including arm swing characteristics. Sixteen subjects with Parkinson’s disease and 13 healthy controls were recruited with the aim of evaluating differences in arm swing features and correlating them with traditional gait parameters. Preliminary results show significant differences between the two groups and a strong correlation between the parameters. The study thus highlights the ability of the proposed system to quantify arm swing features, thus offering a simple tool to provide a more comprehensive gait assessment

Initial Public Offerings and the Firm Location

The firm geographic location matters in IPOs because investors have a strong preference for newly issued local stocks and provide abnormal demand in local offerings. Using equity holdings data for more than 53,000 households, we show the probability to participate to the stock market and the proportion of the equity wealth is abnormally increasing with the volume of the IPOs inside the investor region. Upon nearly the universe of the 167,515 going public and private domestic manufacturing firms, we provide consistent evidence that the isolated private firms have higher probability to go public, larger IPO underpricing cross-sectional average and volatility, and less pronounced long-run under-performance. Similar but opposite evidence holds for the local concentration of the investor wealth. These effects are economically relevant and robust to local delistings, IPO market timing, agglomeration economies, firm location endogeneity, self-selection bias, and information asymmetries, among others. Findings suggest IPO waves have a strong geographic component, highlight that underwriters significantly under-estimate the local demand component thus leaving unexpected money on the table, and support state-contingent but constant investor propensity for risk

Sports as education: Is this a stereotype too? A national research on the relationship between sports practice, bullying, racism and stereotypes among Italian students

This article is based on scientific evidence from a national survey carried out in Italy in 2017 on a sample of 4011 students. The results of the statistical analysis show that the potential educational role of sports is not an explicit value embedded in its practice. In these terms, today the causal link between sports and education appears to be a stereotype. The study shows that teenagers who play sports outside of school have an increase in their levels of tolerance of bullying and racism. In addition, respondents who play sports have highly stereotyped opinions about gender roles and ethnic diversity. The neutrality of sports practice in Italy, with regard to social inclusion and the dissemination of positive values, has been demonstrated. Although sport can be a useful educational tool to mitigate limits arising from disadvantaged social conditions, a direct relation between sports and education has not been observed. In order to spread positive social values and promote social inclusion through sport, we hypothesise that it is necessary to overcome two limits: the inequality in sports opportunities among students and the weakness of the relation between sports and pedagogy. This article finally proposes a pedagogical approach aimed at sports teaching oriented towards social inclusion

Sporadic Model Predictive Control

We present a control scheme combining a Model Predictive Control (MPC) layer and a hierarchically inferior one, in general not of the MPC type. The purpose is to avoid solving the MPC optimisation problem at each control step, thereby lightening the computational burden. The MPC controller can be designed within the classical receding horizon framework, and independently of the lower layer. This makes it easy to apply the scheme to existing systems, where the lower layer may just be the pre-existing control, in a view to enhancing industrial applicability. We name the approach grounding the scheme “sporadic” MPC, owing to the characteristic just evidenced, and in particular to the particular interplay with the existing control layer. We show some simulation examples to demonstrate the achievable advantages

Nanocellulose from Cotton Waste and Its Glycidyl Methacrylate Grafting and Allylation: Synthesis, Characterization and Adsorption Properties

Nanocellulose (NC) is getting ahead as a renewable, biodegradable and biocompatible biomaterial. The NCs for this study were recovered from industrial cotton waste (CFT) by acid hydrolysis (HNC) and by 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) mediated oxidation (ONC). They were functionalized by radical based glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) grafting providing crystalline HNCGMA and ONC-GMA, and by allylation (ALL) providing amorphous HNC-ALL and ONC-ALL. HNC, ONC and their derivatives were chemically and morphologically characterized. Crystalline NCs were found capable to adsorb, from diluted water solution (2 103 M), the antibiotics vancomycin (VC), ciprofloxacin (CP), amoxicillin (AM) and the disinfectant chlorhexidine (CHX), while amorphous NCs did not show any significant adsorption properties. Adsorption capability was quantified by measuring the concentration change in function of the contact time. The adsorption kinetics follow the pseudo-second order model and show complex adsorption mechanisms investigated by an intraparticle diffusion model and interpreted by structure-property relationships. ONC and ONC-GMA loaded with VC, and HNC and HNC-GMA loaded with CP were not colonized by Staphylococcus aureus and by Klebsiella pneumonia and suggested long lasting release capability. Our results can envisage developing CFT derived NCs for environmental applications (water remediation) and for biomedical applications (antibacterial NC). Among the future developments, it could also be of interest to take advantage of acidic, glycidyl and allyl groups\u2019 reactivity to provide other NCs from the NC object of this study

GABAA and GABAB Receptors Mediate GABA-Induced Intracellular Ca2+ Signals in Human Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells

Numerous studies recently showed that the inhibitory neurotransmitter, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), can stimulate cerebral angiogenesis and promote neurovascular coupling by activating the ionotropic GABA(A) receptors on cerebrovascular endothelial cells, whereas the endothelial role of the metabotropic GABA(B) receptors is still unknown. Preliminary evidence showed that GABA(A) receptor stimulation can induce an increase in endothelial Ca2+ levels, but the underlying signaling pathway remains to be fully unraveled. In the present investigation, we found that GABA evoked a biphasic elevation in [Ca2+](i) that was initiated by inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate- and nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate-dependent Ca2+ release from neutral and acidic Ca2+ stores, respectively, and sustained by store-operated Ca2+ entry. GABA(A) and GABA(B) receptors were both required to trigger the endothelial Ca2+ response. Unexpectedly, we found that the GABA(A) receptors signal in a flux-independent manner via the metabotropic GABA(B) receptors. Likewise, the full Ca2+ response to GABA(B) receptors requires functional GABA(A) receptors. This study, therefore, sheds novel light on the molecular mechanisms by which GABA controls endothelial signaling at the neurovascular unit