Caccia alle “cimici” aliene: il ruolo del disinfestatore

Vengono descritte le linee guida sul comportamento da tenere da parte di cittadini e disinfestatori nel caso di infestazioni da cimici asiatiche Halyomorpha halys dentro alle abitazion

Preoccupano le infestazioni della cimice asiatica

2015-Anno caldo delle cimici. Nel corso dell’estate le infestazioni di Halyomorpha halys hanno investito un territorio sempre più ampio, con gravi percentuali di danno su numerose colture. A esse si sono sovrapposti gli attacchi di altri pentatomidi, accomunati anch’essi dalla caratteristica di pungere e deprezzare i frutti. Il malessere degli agricoltori è crescente e la situazione in alcuni contesti ha assunto le dimensioni di un’autentica emergenza

Halyomorpha halys in Emilia, prime risposte dal monitoraggio

OSSERVAZIONI IN CAMPO CONDOTTE NEL 2013-2014. Dopo la sua comparsa in Italia, accertata nel 2012, è stato attivato nella zona di ritrovamento un programma di monitoraggio teso a studiare l’insetto e il suo comportamento nell’ambiente. La specie desta maggiori preoccupazioni nel settore frutticolo, dove il danno rappresentato dalle tipiche deformazioni può giungere al 100

Halyomorpha halys in Italy: first results of field monitoring in fruit orchards

The invasive pest Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) Halyomorpha halys (Heteroptera, Pentatomidae) was detected for the first time in Italy in September 2012 in Modena province (Northern Italy) during an insect collection for educational purposes. A survey performed in 2013 allowed to detect its presence in Emilia Romagna, Lombardy and Piedmont regions. In 2014, in the provinces of Modena, Reggio Emilia and Bologna a periodical active field monitoring was performed using tree beating, sweep-net and visual observations in selected orchards and vineyards, recording numbers of BMSB adults and nymphs, and of other Heteroptera. Besides, fruit injury and crop loss were recorded at harvest. Partial results from field data obtained between April and July 2014 are presented, indicating that BMSB is already becoming an important pest of fruit orchards and that special attention should be deserved to monitor its spread all over the region and the whole Italian country

Samuel Beckett’s humour: attuning philosophy and literary criticism

This thesis explores and describes the comic features of Samuel Beckett’s prose works. It explores fundamental questions about Beckett’s humour. On the one hand, it investigates the nature of humour, and, on the other, it investigates what counts as humour in Beckett. This twofold investigation requires ‘attuning’ philosophy and literary criticism, where questions and tools of each discipline mutually sharpen and refine each other. Chapter 1 evaluates philosophical accounts of humour and identifies Incongruity Theory as the theory offering the best account of humour. According to this theory, a necessary and not sufficient condition for comic amusement is the perception of an incongruity. Chapter 2 starts exploring what counts as humour in Beckett by examining where comic incongruities are located. By doing so, this chapter puts the Incongruity Theory to the test, and, evaluates the analytical tools ordinarily used in describing humour. This exploration uses Ruby Cohn’s seminal description of Beckett’s humour as a springboard. This chapter individuates a comic layer which Cohn’s description has overlooked – the ‘comic of language acts’. Chapter 3 analyses Beckett’s texts in order to describe the comic devices that depend on the (mis)performance of language acts. In order to do so, the discussion makes use of Austin’s Theory of Speech Acts. As a result, this chapter develops a set of tools able to capture ‘the comic of language acts’, a comic layer which crucially shapes Beckett’s writing. Chapter 4 demonstrates how to make use of the set of tools developed in Chapter 3 by examining three key works of Beckett – More Pricks than Kicks, Watt, and Molloy. This examination leads to the individuation of three movements at the level of illocutionary acts – ‘twists’, ‘convolutions’, and ‘oscillations’ – which are informative of Beckett’s writing and of the experience of reading these works

Lagrangian diffusive reactor for detailed thermochemical computations of plasma flows

The simulation of thermochemical nonequilibrium for the atomic and molecular energy level populations in plasma flows requires a comprehensive modeling of all the elementary collisional and radiative processes involved. Coupling detailed chemical mechanisms to flow solvers is computationally expensive and often limits their application to 1D simulations. We develop an efficient Lagrangian diffusive reactor moving along the streamlines of a baseline flow simulation to compute detailed thermochemical effects. In addition to its efficiency, the method allows us to model both continuum and rarefied flows, while including mass and energy diffusion. The Lagrangian solver is assessed for several testcases including strong normal shockwaves, as well as 2D axisymmetric blunt-body hypersonic rarefied flows. In all the testcases performed, the Lagrangian reactor improves drastically the baseline simulations. The computational cost of a Lagrangian recomputation is typically orders of magnitude smaller with respect to a full solution of the problem. The solver has the additional benefit of being immune from statistical noise, which strongly affects the accuracy of DSMC simulations, especially considering minor species in the mixture. The results demonstrate that the method enables applying detailed mechanisms to multidimensional solvers to study thermo-chemical nonequilibrium flows

SHANK3 controls maturation of social reward circuits in the VTA.

Haploinsufficiency of SHANK3, encoding the synapse scaffolding protein SHANK3, leads to a highly penetrant form of autism spectrum disorder. How SHANK3 insufficiency affects specific neural circuits and how this is related to specific symptoms remains elusive. Here we used shRNA to model Shank3 insufficiency in the ventral tegmental area of mice. We identified dopamine (DA) and GABA cell-type-specific changes in excitatory synapse transmission that converge to reduce DA neuron activity and generate behavioral deficits, including impaired social preference. Administration of a positive allosteric modulator of the type 1 metabotropic glutamate receptors mGluR1 during the first postnatal week restored DA neuron excitatory synapse transmission and partially rescued the social preference defects, while optogenetic DA neuron stimulation was sufficient to enhance social preference. Collectively, these data reveal the contribution of impaired ventral tegmental area function to social behaviors and identify mGluR1 modulation during postnatal development as a potential treatment strategy

Decision-making abilities under risk and ambiguity in adults with traumatic brain injury: what do we know so far? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health and socio-economic problem since it is one of the major sources of death and disability worldwide. TBI patients usually show high heterogeneity in their clinical features, including both cognitive and emotional/behavioral alterations. As it specifically concerns cognitive functioning, these patients usually show decision-making (DM) deficits. DM is commonly considered a complex and multistep process that is strictly linked to both hot and cold executive functioning and is pivotal for daily life functioning and patients’ autonomy. However, the results are not always in agreement, with some studies that report huge alterations in the DM processes, while others do not. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aims to integrate past literature on this topic, providing a clear and handy picture both for researchers and clinicians. Thirteen studies addressing domain-general DM abilities were included from an initial N = 968 (from three databases). Results showed low heterogeneity between the studies (I2 = 7.90, Q (12) = 13.03, p = .37) supporting the fact that, overall, TBI patients showed lower performance in DM tasks as compared to healthy controls (k = 899, g = .48, 95% CI [0.33; 0.62]) both in tasks under ambiguity and under risk. The evidence that emerged from this meta-analysis denotes a clear deficit of DM abilities in TBI patients. However, DM tasks seemed to have good sensitivity but low specificity. A detailed description of patients’ performances and the role of both bottom-up, hot executive functions and top-down control functions have been further discussed. Finally, future directions and practical implications for both researchers and clinicians have been put forward

Continuous representations of speed by striatal medium spiny neurons

The striatum is critical for controlling motor output. However, it remains unclear how striatal output neurons encode and facilitate movement. A prominent theory suggests that striatal units encode movements in bursts of activity near specific events, such as the start or end of actions. These bursts are theorized to gate or permit specific motor actions, thereby encoding and facilitating complex sequences of actions. An alternative theory has suggested that striatal neurons encode continuous changes in sensory or motor information with graded changes in firing rate. Supporting this theory, many striatal neurons exhibit such graded changes without bursting near specific actions. Here, we evaluated these two theories in the same recordings of mice (both male and female). We recorded single-unit and multiunit activity from the dorsomedial striatum of mice as they spontaneously explored an arena. We observed both types of encoding, although continuous encoding was more prevalent than bursting near movement initiation or termination. The majority of recorded units did not exhibit positive linear relationships with speed but instead exhibited nonlinear relationships that peaked at a range of locomotor speeds. Bulk calcium recordings of identified direct and indirect pathway neurons revealed similar speed tuning profiles, indicating that the heterogeneity in response profiles was not due to this genetic distinction. We conclude that continuous encoding of speed is a central component of movement encoding in the striatum