Climate Change Copenhagen December 2009

By Vladimiro Rinaldi.

Copenhagen seems the same as always, people go around like on all the other days, long faces, few smiles. To be honest they are almost always like this with foreigners, but perhaps it’s the grey outside and inside that I don’t like much. The philosopher, Jigoro Kano, inventor of Judo, wrote (in Japanese) a haiku sweet and full of hope : Spring will return.

In Copenhagen, everything seems, for the Danes that live here anything but a different day, a rather special day: today the start of the UN summit on environmental problems, the changes in climate due to the excessive warming of the atmosphere that involves the whole planet. And as a consequence the creatures including us those responsible for the threat that is already happening.

Maybe it’s only interesting to this foreigner who goes around on foot amongst the Danes and speaks English to communicate, to record what the atmosphere is like.

The fact is that no one trusts politicians any more, we consider them false, inept and gluttonous, able to unleash wars and plan acts of terror but not to heal the wounds or hope in the change of route that is really needed. And this is not just the Danes.

One really doesn’t sense an air of celebration or hope. Dear politicians who govern the world, repair the damage or no one will ever believe you again. We need your good example, your good behaviour and not just an electoral bluff in order to have faith in you.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General on Climate Change and one of the recognized international leaders of sustainable development.

Living a special event like this meeting of the leaders of the countries of the world here for a meeting on one of the most worrying themes the overheating of the planet and its dreadful effects in the short, medium and long term.

The event, seemingly without conviction in the eyes of the people deluded yet again by their national politicians and the world’s, merits reflection as well as importance. This could be our last chance. Life or death doesn’t seem to matter much to anyone any more like in a horror or science fiction film. Floods of subliminal messages and disinformation, useless comments and banale talk shows on TV. Or where we have even participated via blogs with our protests in different languages and then nothing changes.


These governments and how many others command the nations and in the world have left us insensitive even to horrors. We are hypnotized and we are almost aware of it. Indifference (a terrible ill) feels like an antidote against the evils and the mental condition, provoked in us by the global political and economic gurus of every sort and type.

International Exhibition on Climate Change in the Botanic Garden, Copenhagen

Instead of meeting to talk, you need to get a move on to solve the problems and for this you have your energies and minds to use and to use for the good of the people and the environment and not against the people and the environment. I am talking to all of you.

The oceans of dollars, euro and all the currencies of the world spent on arms need to be spent to solve the social, envoronmental and climate problems.

And your powerful and less powerful armies, navies, airforces transformed into armies of peace and not of death and destruction.

The most sophisticated technologies in the service of good not bad.

The soldiers are soldiers of peace and not war or terrorism and they know each other working together with you together with everyone in a global effort and without tyranny or bluff shoulder to shoulder in defence of fragility and what has not been wanted so far starting a new story a new benign humanism. A school of thought and behaviour. Beginning right with you, You that are leaders and rich should give a good example for a start while there are so many poor people suffering and dying.

Enough with vanity and narcissism, class difference and the taste of power. Enough! We are fed up with you.

So: the human resources and huge capital exist to be used in completely the opposite way to how they have been used so far.

To resolve social, environmental and climate problems move quickly and decisively to implement sustainable development. Maybe we are still in time.

So that you are not condemmed by history for the good that you didn’t choose to do.

Visit the official web site of the UN Climate Change Convention

Ricordi del Lotto 7 al Tiburtino Terzo (suggestioni)

Vladimiro Rinaldi: Disegno a colori (1999) e passagio in computer grafica (2004)

Informazioni sul progetto "Blue Brain" dell'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale di Losanna

Il progetto Blue Brain è una collaborazione tra l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale di Losanna e IBM. Ci sono anche i contributi provenienti da altre università in Spagna, Israele, Stati Uniti e Regno Unito.

La corteccia cerebrale, la contorta "materia grigia", che rappresenta l'80% del cervello umano, è responsabile della nostra capacità di ricordare, pensare, riflettere, solidarizzare, comunicare, adattarsi a nuove situazioni e progetti per il futuro. La corteccia è apparsa nei mammiferi, ed ha una struttura fondamentalmente semplice e ripetitiva che è la stessa in tutte le specie di mammiferi.

Il cervello è popolato da miliardi di neuroni, ognuno collegato a migliaia di suoi vicini per assoni e dendriti, una sorta di biologico "cablaggio". Il cervello elabora le informazioni con l'invio di segnali elettrici di neurone in neurone lungo questi fili.

Nella corteccia, i neuroni sono organizzati in unità funzionali di base, ciascuno dei quali contiene circa 10.000 neuroni che sono collegati in un modo intricato, ma integrato e coerente. Queste unità funzionano molto simili a microcircuiti in un computer. Questo microcircuito, conosciuto come la colonna neocorticale (NCC), è ripetuto milioni di volte in tutta la corteccia. La differenza tra il cervello di un topo e il cervello di un essere umano è fondamentalmente una questione di volume -- gli esseri umani hanno molte più colonne neocorticali, e quindi piu' neuroni dei topi.


Title: Whole Column
Description: Visualization of an entire neocortical column with network activity. The membrane voltage is shown in false colors. This provides a view into the neocortical column at a level inaccessible to experimental techniques to date.
Author: BBP/EPFL

Il primo passo del progetto Blue Brain è quello di ricreare questo microcircuito fondamentale, fino al livello dei biologicamente accurati singoli neuroni. Il microcontrollore può quindi essere utilizzato nelle simulazioni. Il progetto Blue Brain non mira a creare un cervello artificiale, ma piuttosto a studiare (ndr tramitte simulazione) come funziona il cervello e per servire come strumento per i neuroscienziati ed i ricercatori medici. Non è un tentativo di creare un cervello. Non si tratta di un progetto di intelligenza artificiale.

Come farà la replica delle colonne neocorticali ad aiutarci a comprendere il cervello ?

Replicando la colonna è uno step evolutivo importante e misterioso, e se siamo in grado di capire come questo avviene, saremo in grado di spiegare come il cervello cambia da una specie all'altra in evoluzione. Imitando l'espansione della neocorteccia ci consentirà anche di esaminare come la potenza cambia mentre il cervello si espande. Essa ci consentirà anche di incominciare a capire le registrazioni elettro-encefalografiche (EEG) e le risonanze magnetiche . Richiede la connessione di tutte le parti insieme del cervello. E questo di per sé rivelerà molti principi importanti di come il cervello nel suo insieme è collegato - a livello cellulare.

Estratto del testo da: http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18699.html
Traduzione di Vladimiro Rinaldi

About the Blue Brain Project

The cerebral cortex, the convoluted "grey matter" that makes up 80% of the human brain, is responsible for our ability to remember, think, reflect, empathize, communicate, adapt to new situations and plan for the future. The cortex first appeared in mammals, and it has a fundamentally simple repetitive structure that is the same across all mammalian species.


The brain is populated with billions of neurons, each connected to thousands of its neighbors by dendrites and axons, a kind of biological "wiring". The brain processes information by sending electrical signals from neuron to neuron along these wires.

In the cortex, neurons are organized into basic functional units, each containing about 10,000 neurons that are connected in an intricate but consistent way. These units operate much like microcircuits in a computer. This microcircuit, known as the neocortical column (NCC), is repeated millions of times across the cortex. The difference between the brain of a mouse and the brain of a human is basically just volume - humans have many more neocortical columns and thus neurons than mice.


Title: Whole Column
Description: Visualization of an entire neocortical column with network activity. The membrane voltage is shown in false colors. This provides a view into the neocortical column at a level inaccessible to experimental techniques to date.
Author: BBP/EPFL

The Blue Brain project is a collaboration between the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale di Lausanne and IBM. There are also inputs from other universities in Spain, Israel, USA and UK.

The first step of the Blue Brain project is to re-create this fundamental microcircuit, down to the level of biologically accurate individual neurons. The microcircuit can then be used in simulations. The Blue Brain project does not aim to create an artificial brain but to explore how it functions and to serve as a tool for neuroscientists and medical researchers. It is not an attempt to create a brain. It is not an artificial intelligence project.

How will replicating the neocortical columns help us to understand the brain?

Replicating the column is a key and "secret" evolutionary step, and if we can capture how this is done we will be able to explain how the brain changed from one species to another in evolution. Mimicking the expansion of the neocortex will also allow us to examine how the computing power changes as the brain expands. It will also allow us to begin understanding EEG recordings in the clinics as well as fMRI studies. It requires connecting all parts of the brain together and this by itself will reveal many important principles of how the brain as a whole is connected - at the cellular level.

text from "About the Blue Brain Project" at: http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18699.html

Has the Mountain (Therapy) fallen?

This is my personal experience in four years of mountain therapy and thirty years of anxiolytics, antidepressants, sleeping tablets and painkillers: about the visit to Pescasseroli and not to Santiago de Compostela, Lourdes or other desirable place "outside the CIM walls".

Mountain Therapy: For those who still do not know what it is, and would like to know more about it and what and who it is for, whether it works or not and how effectively it works or could work if improved.

This "discipline" was born in France and adopted by the Italians of Trento. It forms part of the practices of re-education and re-entry into "civil" life for those who are already in psychotherapeutic treatment, for a variety of reasons.

Well then is it beneficial? I think yes, but it needs to be improved in the way it is organised. In Rome there aren't any mountains. So like Mohammed, the patients must go to the mountains.

There is a need to plan a program of trips during the year. There is a need to decide on viable destinations, where to stay (and stay well) to make reservations, arrange transportation, plan therapy techniques with the mountain and 'brotherly love.

The operators report that the budgets for mountain therapy trips are scarce but we the patients do not see the published budgets, nor are we involved or consulted about the projects proposed for our benefit. Do the opinions and considerations of the patients count or is this issue "off limits"?

As patients, we should be able verify that which concerns us. Shouldn't we cooperate, interact and participate together in the design of the projects aimed, together with supportive therapies, at our recovery?

Are we patients or hostages?

The operators of the group for psychotherapy and hiking in mid altitude mountains, at the CIM in Via Giorgio Morandi had good kind ways. We were happy both for them and for us. It's their duty to be so. Hopefully they continue to be even more kind. It will be good for the health of both the patients and themselves and it will improve the service.

For the rest I have to admit that I had a good experience in the mountains with them only once in four years. It was a four day trip. There was time for the senses to get in balance with the environment: the smell, the contact with plants, rocks, with the sound of the stream. This all helped us to want to socialize with each other.

On the otherhand I had a bad, very bad, experience, in the various hit and run trips in a single day, more often with spartan or rickety rather than appropriate transport, traffic jams and stressing dashes along the motorway; trips that were only tiring, the memory of the mountain blurred by aches.

Exhausting hit and run trips ahould be avoided. How many times I have told the operators, amongst other real, tangible things, but they did not want to hear. Not because they are brilliant but because they do not recognize the need to adapt to input from the patients who are the beneficiaries of the services.

Who are the funds for? Who are the projects for?

Maybe for the career of the operators rather than for the recovery of the patients?

The first time that I went with the group to Pescasseroli, I felt the fascination and the therapy of the mountain environment and of the welcome in good conditions and the good behaviour of the operators who did their duty in a satisfactory way. That time they took loving and responsible care of the patients entrusted to them (ie us) and these thanks I owe both to the mountains and to all of us in the group just like new-found good family. The patients, men and women, together with the operators and the nurse who was really kind. Duty aside, I think that it was also more pleasant for the operators and the nurse to do their job in the mountains rather than closed in the CIM.

What I did not like at all was that there were many sorcerer's apprentices of psychiatry and psychology and "photography" that were not part of our group. They had an agreement with our operators (without our knowledge) to take multiple, almost manic, photos of us during mountain therapy. These photographic voyeurs had the male and female patients in mountain therapy as their subjects. They filmed and photographed constantly during the excursions. I didn't like this at all, I felt humiliated, used and deceived. They photographed us as if we were animals at the zoo. A real lack of respect, a deplorable absence of style and an insult to professional ethics and the dignity of patients in mountain therapy.

My elogy to mountain therapy is above all for us as a group to the patients and the nature, the environment and the brotherhood, and sense of friendship, love that's not bought and sold (something rare in psychiatry and psychology).

Contro lo stigma in psichiatria

La salute mentale e gli apparati di gestione della sanita' pubblica in materia di salute mentale e non soltanto della salute mentale...

A voi cari direttori e direttrici dei CIM , dei DSM e delle altre strutture sanitarie per la salute mentale e non soltanto della salute mentale...del "Bel Paese ", ed a voi operatori ed operatrici psichiatri, psicologi ed assistenti sociali, e cari politici e pubblici amministratori,

Permettere che dica due o tre cosette.

( Per chi ancora non lo sapesse )

Esistono i cosiddetti centri di salute mentale (CIM) i quali dovrebbero offrire validi servizi alla cittadinanza utente che ivi si rivolge avendo dei problemi , ma che (ohinoi come siamo ridotti male in questo Paese..) questi centri di salute mentale ( CIM) si deve ammettere che invece non aggiungono molto a quel che triste era e (dopo la benedetta legge Basaglia) rimane ancora da sanare per il bene della dignità dell' uomo e la salute fisica,morale, spirituale e, perché no ? pure sociale ed ambientale dei pazienti e le pazienti ( i cittadini e le cittadine: utenti) .

Poiché in molti anni che frequento questi centri di riferimento, mi e´dato di rendermi conto dall ´interno. Ed in qualita´di utente, paziente e cittadino, devo riconoscere che purtroppo lasciano a desiderare. Andrebbero migliorati non tolti. Resi migliori sia nell' accoglienza, nell´ospitalità e la stesura dei progetti raramente pensati ed immaginati dai pazienti e le pazienti o insieme ai pazienti e le pazienti. E questo non va bene. I pazienti sono persone non oggetti passivi.

In materia di disagio mentale e giusti trattamenti, c'è ancora molta etica professionale strada da percorrere ( a parte le eccezioni ) . Si direbbe che i pazienti e le pazienti siano piu´ consapevoli in materia della conoscenza di che cosa significhi la salute mentale, il dolore, i diritti negati.

Nei centri normalmente mancano gli spazi di accoglienza ed ospitalita´. Ad essere intesi NON soltanto di tipo ambulatoriale e NON da orribili ed incivili manicomi. Ma spazi ben concepiti, sostenibili ed a disposizione dei pazienti e le pazienti. Fatte PURE di spazi ricreativi e per il relax e di valida fisioterapia. Se coloro che leggono mancano di immaginazione: meglio che queste strutture somiglino al Grand Hotel che all ´ex manicomio Santa Maria della Pieta´(che tutto aveva meno che la pieta´). Strutture accoglienti, rispettanti la dignita´della persona ed i diritti umani. Spazi dove architettura armoniosa, psicologia, rieducazione e poesia coestino per il rinserimento dei pazienti e le pazienti alla vita sociale.

Serve anche il coinvolgimento d´amore e rispetto e la dedizione da parte del personale (a tutti i livelli compresi i politici che controllono i budget). Non devono mancare l ´amicizia, la fratellanza da parte del personale (a tutti i livelli) nei confronti dei pazienti e le pazienti. Perche´senza amore ed il rispetto della dignita´umana, dei diritti (non intesi dei favori) non guarisce nessuno.

Definizione della salute mentale da parte dell'ONU

La salute mentale si riferisce a una vasta gamma di attività, direttamente o indirettamente connesse alla componente del benessere mentale incluso nella definizione di salute della Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanita' (OMS): "Uno stato di completo benessere fisico, mentale e il benessere sociale, e non la semplice assenza di malattia" . Essa è legata alla promozione del benessere, la prevenzione dei disturbi mentali, e per il trattamento e la riabilitazione delle persone affette da disturbi mentali.

http://www.who.int/topics/mental_health/en/

World Health Organisation's definition of mental health

Mental Health refers to a broad array of activities directly or indirectly related to the mental well-being component included in the WHO's definition of health: "A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease". It is related to the promotion of well-being, the prevention of mental disorders, and the treatment and rehabilitation of people affected by mental disorders.

http://www.who.int/topics/mental_health/en/

Questo e solo l'inizio!