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Il volume mette in luce intrecci e dissonanze tra le rappresentazioni mediatiche dell’invecchiamento, le politiche di welfare finalizzate a regolare l’accesso ai servizi da parte degli anziani e le pratiche di cura volte a supportarli in caso di insorgenza di problemi di salute. Lo scopo è quello di fornire una visione complessiva dell’invecchiamento, al di fuori di ogni stereotipo, sottolineando come i significati dati a questo fenomeno e gli assetti di cura siano legati da relazioni di co-costituzione reciproca, cambiando e cambiandosi a vicenda nel corso del tempo. Un libro basato su indagini empiriche innovative, che si pone all’incrocio tra la sociologia della salute, gli studi sociali sulla scienza e la tecnologia e l’analisi delle politiche pubbliche.

Objective The Bologna motor and non-motor prospective study on parkinsonism at onset (BoProPark) was designed to prospectively characterize motor and non-motor features in patients with a progressive neurodegenerative disease starting with parkinsonism since early disease stage and to investigate their diagnostic and prognostic role in the differential diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease from atypical parkinsonisms. The aim of this paper is to describe the method and population of the BoProPark study. Methods Patients referred to our Department with parkinsonism within 3 years from motor onset were recruited. Secondary causes of parkinsonism were excluded. Each patient underwent a comprehensive evaluation of motor and non-motor symptoms, assessed by means of quantitative, objective instrumental tests in addition to scales and questionnaires. The evaluations were performed at enrolment (T0), after 16 months (T1) and after 5 years (T2). Diagnoses were made according to consensus criteria. Results We recruited 150 patients, with mean age 61.5 ± 9.8 years and mean disease duration 20 ± 9 months. H&Y stage was 1 in 47.3% and 2 in 46.7% of cases. Mean UPDRS-III was 17.7 ± 9.2. Fifty-four patients were on dopaminergic treatment with median levodopa equivalent daily dose (LEDD) of 200 mg. Conclusions We expect that the prospective nature of the BoProPark study as well as the comprehensive, instrumental evaluation of motor and non-motor symptoms in patients with parkinsonism will provide important new insights for both clinical practice and research. Our data could be used for comparison with other cohorts and shared with national and international collaborators to develop new innovative projects.

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La rilevanza di associare alla conservazione una adeguata valorizzazio- ne dei beni culturali rientra ormai a pieno titolo nelle politiche di sviluppo sociale ed economico adottate a livello internazionale e nella Unione Europea. Il valore aggiunto del bene culturale, infatti, al di là del dato materiale, si estrinseca potentemente nel patrimonio di storia, memoria, tradizione culturale che da questo emana. Attorno ad esso si coagulano, infatti, da un canto, elementi di ritrovata identità territoriale che possono innescare virtuosi comportamenti civici di rispetto e tutela del bene stesso di aspettative, emozioni, associazioni cognitive su cui è possibile generare occasioni presente contributo pone in evidenza come la valorizzazione a livello internazionale della dimensione culturale, artistica e sportiva dei Giochi Isolimpici, per gli aspetti del educative e di ricaduta turistica, possano dunque rappresentare una risorsa ancora poco nota e utilizzata, ma di notevole interesse per una politica di promozione e ge- stione del territorio della Città Metropolitana di Napoli e della Campania.

BACKGROUND There is a need for an easily administered instrument which can be applied to all patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) to measure disease severity for clinical assessment, research, or therapeutic trials. The pathophysiology of RLS is not clear and no objective measure so far devised can apply to all patients or accurately reflect severity. Moreover, RLS is primarily a subjective disorder. Therefore, a subjective scale is at present the optimal instrument to meet this need. METHODS Twenty centers from six countries participated in an initial reliability and validation study of a rating scale for the severity of RLS designed by the International RLS study group (IRLSSG). A ten-question scale was developed on the basis of repeated expert evaluation of potential items. This scale, the IRLSSG rating scale (IRLS), was administered to 196 RLS patients, most on some medication, and 209 control subjects. RESULTS The IRLS was found to have high levels of internal consistency, inter-examiner reliability, test-retest reliability over a 2-4 week period, and convergent validity. It also demonstrated criterion validity when tested against the current criterion of a clinical global impression and readily discriminated patient from control groups. The scale was dominated by a single severity factor that explained at least 59% of the pooled item variance. CONCLUSIONS This scale meets performance criteria for a brief, patient completed instrument that can be used to assess RLS severity for purposes of clinical assessment, research, or therapeutic trials. It supports a finding that RLS is a relatively uniform disorder in which the severity of the basic symptoms is strongly related to their impact on the patient's life. In future studies, the IRLS should be tested against objective measures of RLS severity and its sensitivity should be studied as RLS severity is systematically manipulated by therapeutic interventions.

La relazione tra potere, tecnologia e processi organizzativi e un tema di lunga data negli studi organizzativi, tipicamente articolato lungo due principali posizioni polarizzate: una pessimistica e una ottimistica, entrambe caratterizzate da una visione deterministica per cui la tecnologia "impatta" la societa e le organizzazioni. A ben vedere, tuttavia, questa visione deterministica manca di cogliere le complesse, e spesso ambigue, dinamiche che caratterizzano la relazione fra potere e tecnologia. Il presente Special Issue si focalizza al contrario sulle complessita della relazione fra potere, tecnologie digitali e processi organizzativi. Nel presentare le ragioni degli articoli che compongono lo Special Issue, si suggeriscono cinque tematiche emergenti quando si approcciano empiricamente e teoricamente tali complessita: 1) tecnologie digitali e relazioni di potere nella struttura e nei processi organizzativi; 2) il legame fra tecnologia, potere e partecipazione dei lavoratori; 3) tecnologie digitali, controllo algoritmico e rinegoziazione del potere; 4) tecnologie digitali, pratiche di gestione delle risorse umane e progettazione congiunta di tecnologia, lavoro e organizzazione; 5) l’iperindustrializzazione come approccio critico per meglio comprendere la relazione fra tecnologia, lavoro e organizzazione. Presi insieme, questi articoli vanno oltre la semplificazione e la polarizzazione che caratterizza il dibattito e offrono una rappresentazione sfumata della relazione fra potere, tecnologia e organizzazione.

Workplace health promotion (WHP) are often depicted as an opportunity for pursuing a better and broader well-being condition under the assumption that working environments affect the physical, mental, and social well-being of individuals who spend large proportion of waking hours at work. While most empirical studies provided medical evidence to the effectiveness of WHP programs, scholars question the instrumental purposes of these programs founded on the belief that “healthy workers are better workers”. Little is known, for instance, about the design of WHP programs and their acceptance by workers. Our study addresses this gap, analyzing the co-production of a WHP program in an Italian research institute promoted by the healthcare authority, the local government and the national center for prevention and security in the workplaces. To this aim, we adopt the notion of boundary object investigate how different stakeholders reclaim to take part and being involved in this process, re-shaping their goals and their boundaries and why a WHP program or parts of it may be rejected or re-negotiated by its recipients. Our analysis reveals how each stakeholder contributes to re-shape the WHP program which emerges as the modular product of the composition of each matter of concern. Most notably, the strong rooting in a clinical perspective and the original focus on only workers at risk is gradually flanked by initiatives to involve all employees. Moreover, workers draw a line as for the legitimacy of employers’ intervention in the personal sphere of health promotion, embracing interventions addressing diet and physical activity while rejecting measures targeting smoking and alcohol consumption.

The paper focuses on the relationships between power and technology in the field of organization studies, shedding light on the conceptual juxtapositions arousing from the debate. It discusses the many concepts of power and the relationship between digital technologies and power. Then it focuses on the role of digital technologies with respect to automation processes and control dynamics and deepens the transformations of jobs and professions in relation to digital technologies' adoption. The contribution calls for overcoming the dualistic nature of debates, so to understand sociality and materiality, power and technology as a form of continuum.

Attraverso una ricognizione concettuale della letteratura, il lavoro discute la relazione potere-tecnologia-organizzazione considerando due pratiche abilitate da tecnologie digitali: il lavoro da remoto e il monitoraggio sul lavoro. I due casi di pratiche lavorative tecnologicamente supportate permettono di ritornare a tematiche classiche del dibattito organizzativo, quali l’analisi delle dinamiche di controllo emergenti con l’introduzione di tecnologie digitali e le conseguenze sul potere preesistente. Con la metafora del contraccolpo si mostra che l’opportunità di esercitare un controllo più pervasivo sulla forza lavoro non si traduce automaticamente in un rafforzamento delle asimmetrie di potere. Al contrario, tale controllo potrebbe innescare nuove forme di riappropriazione del potere da parte dei lavoratori.

In this article, we examine the kinds of control practices that emerge with the introduction of digital technologies, and how these technologies are employed to shape power within workplaces. We present a comparative conceptual review of work practices by contrasting remote work and the use of workplace wearables. We trace forms of power and control that have been enacted with the adoption of these work‐related technologies and associated practices. We find that the prevailing literature focuses on the practices enacted by management in order to control workers and exert power over them, and we propose that a more comprehensive approach be taken. In support of this view, we show how the concept of appropriation emerges from science and technology studies, and we argue that such a concept would be useful for exploring how workers use and incorporate digital technologies into their daily lives, thus reshaping power in organizations.

This paper contributes to challenging common behavioural or cognitive explanations for health and wellbeing outcomes, focussing on social practices through which people, with the help of other subjects, try to improve their health conditions. To renew the debate about health promotion, my work is placed at the intersection between the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies, adopting the concepts of care infrastructures and health practices that are introduced in the next section. With this goal, my paper draws on a qualitative study concerning a Workplace Health Promotion programme aimed at reducing the risks of Type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases among sedentary workers. The findings illustrate how a care infrastructure in the field of health promotion is designed, put to work, repaired and ‘put aside’ in relation to two health practices (‘doing physical activity’ and ‘following the Mediterranean diet’). Drawing on the presented case, I show how the change in daily habits in the fields of nutrition and physical activity is a collective effort involving different spheres of life, connecting human and non-human elements and bringing out affective intensities among them.

La promozione della salute sui luoghi di lavoro è oggetto di riflessione e analisi di discipline che vanno dalla medicina preventiva fino alle scienze aziendali, passando per la dietologia e le scienze motorie. Il nostro articolo si propone invece di contribuire al dibattito sulla promozione della salute sui luoghi di lavoro da una prospettiva organizzativista, indagandone gli aspetti processuali e la significazione simbolica nei contesti organizzativi. A questo scopo, il lavoro documenta e analizza la progettazione di Key to Health, un’iniziativa di Workplace Health Promotion condotta presso un grande istituto di ricerca con sede nella Provincia Autonoma di Trento. Tramite l’analisi dello studio di caso del progetto Key to Health, l’articolo intende riflettere sui processi di co-costruzione di un intervento di Workplace Health Promotion, soffermandosi sulle tensioni emergenti dai diversi modi di concepire e rappresentare la gestione della salute all’interno di un’organizzazione.

Chronic insomnia is the most common sleep disorder in the elderly population. From 9 to 50% of patients suffer of paradoxical insomnia, with the same symptoms and ailments, though characterized by normal sleep patterns. We have investigated the level of parameters related to stress in a group of post-menopausal female patients (age range 55-70 years) suffering by either objective or paradoxical insomnia, in particular we have measured 24-hours urinary cortisol, allostatic load index, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) score, and, for the first time, mitokines (mitochondrial stress response molecules) such as FGF21, GDF15 and Humanin (HN). Results show that the two groups are different as far as sleep efficiency score, as expected, but not for stress parameters, that in some cases resulted within the normality range, although quite close to the top threshold (such as cortisol) or much higher with respect to normality ranges (such as PSS). Therefore, the consequences of paradoxical insomnia on the expression of these parameters are the same as objective insomnia. As far as the level of mitokines, we showed that FGF21 and HN in particular resulted altered (decreased and increased, respectively) with respect to control population, however with no difference between the two groups of patients.

Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) programs are undergoing significant changes mixing the healthy lifestyle promotion with the self-tracking opportunities offered by digital technologies. The shift to more pervasive (or intrusive) forms of primary prevention for chronic diseases requires to justify the existence of healthcare infrastructures in work settings and a redefinition of the role of employers and healthcare institutions. The paper describes and analyses a WHP initiative conducted in Italy to illustrate the infrastructuring of the governance of technologically-enhanced prevention in the workplace.

Il testo che riporta i risultati di ricerca sul ruolo del mediatore linguistico culturale nelle strutture ospedaliere mette in evidenza le molteplici funzioni che la figura del mediatore svolge, sottolineando che se lo si considera semplicemente un traduttore se ne sminuisce la funzione e le potenzialità

The “Prima Mostra Triennale delle Terre Italiane d’ Oltremare” was inaugurated on 9th May 1940 and closed after only one month because of the burst out of the war. It inserted itself in the current of the colonial exhibitions which were necessary to create in Italy the consent on the colonization and to launch on the global scenery the image of Italy like a big colonial power. In the setting up of the “Triennale”, the archaeology had to show the historical legitimacy of the conquest of the overseas territories welding the feats of the Ancient Rome to those of the Fascism. Nevertheless this task is not clearly evaluable since it is not known with precision which and how many works there were positioned. In this place it is reconstructed the composition of the setting up on the basis of the examination of the administrative acts. It is retraced the complex events of the postwar restitutions of the works coming from the ex-territories of the Empire, Libya, Greece and Albania. Attention is drawn to Amedeo Maiuri, who was the researcher of the section “Roma Antica sul mare” and of that of the Italian Isles of the Aegean Sea.

La scuola primaria è un luogo tecnologicamente denso, costituito da materiali di uso comune e da materiali specifici per l’apprendimento. Inoltre, nello spazio scolastico attori umani e non-umani si combinano articolando e disarticolando i confini tra i generi. Il contributo sviluppa la questione della costruzione sociomateriale del genere a partire dai risultati di una ricerca etnografica svolta in una scuola steineriana italiana. In particolare, in esso si intende mostrare le peculiari modalità attraverso cui gli oggetti e le pratiche quotidiane danno vita a dei processi educativi che configurano materialmente il genere. Ciò che emerge dalla ricerca è che la materialità agente nella scuola steineriana non sembra strutturare rigidamente le identità di genere, ma le mette in scena in modo fluido e nomadico.

Type 1 diabetes is chronic condition due to the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. We present TreC Diabetes, a system consisting of a mobile diary and a web dashboard allowing patients to record disease-related information, which can be visualized by diabetologists through a dedicated dashboard. We also present the results of an observational study to assess the user acceptance of the system.