Ottavia Amato

Young oncologist lended to public health, curious lady, worried human.

[Stefano Mazzurana @Ste_Mazzu]

Fino ai primi anni '80 in Italia le aliquote fiscali massima e minima erano 72%-10%; col tempo e l'alacre lavoro di vari governi venduti oggi sono 43%-23%: prima di tutto, ripristinare la giustizia fiscale progressiva e della patrimoniale non ci sarà bisogno

[Marianna Aprile @mariannaaprile]

Fossero stati ergastolani estradati, ci saremmo fatti trovare a Ciampino ad accoglierli.
Ma sono attivisti, civili, disarmati, rapiti in acque internazionali (per gli haters: zecche) quindi che si paghino pure il biglietto.
Prima gli italiani, ma mica tutti.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.

Her name is Audrey van der Meer.

She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.

The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.

Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.

Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.

When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.

The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.

When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.

Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.

Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.

The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.

Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.

Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.

Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.

Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.

Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.

A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.

The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.

The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.

The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.

That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.

Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.

Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.

Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.

You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.

The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.

Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

[Stefano Mazzurana @Ste_Mazzu]

#Cuba ha esaurito petrolio e gasolio a causa del blocco criminale Usa, la popolazione è allo stremo, manca tutto.
Dal 1959 Cuba ha inviato missioni mediche e umanitarie in aiuto in più di 160 nazioni, Italia compresa, che oggi ringraziano facendo spallucce.

[Stew Peters @realstewpeters]

MARCO RUBIO: “The goal of the war in Iran is now to return it to how it was before Trump started the war.”

Unreal.

[Ottavia Amato @Ottavia]

@Cartabellotta E se invece lo capissero cosa dovrebbero fare?

[Financial Times @FT]

With Italian salaries having stagnated for decades, Milan's house-price-to-income ratio (a popular metric of housing affordability) is now worse than London's. https://t.co/XTvwA9wbL6

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Sitting by a window is associated with significantly improved cognitive performance.

[JAMA @JAMA_current]

.@JAMACardio Editor in Chief Barbara Casadei, MD, DPhil, reflects on the legacy of Eugene Braunwald, MD (1929-2026), whose contributions fundamentally shaped modern #cardiology.

https://t.co/PpGy1xbvWs

[Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, FASCO @DrHBurstein]

Very important data. Even in the absence of oral SERD at crossover, there is no apparent OS benefit as yet for switch based on molecular ESR1mut detection without radiological progression. And in current practice, all patients would get an oral SERD at radiological/clinical PD

[JAMA @JAMA_current]

💬 Perspective: Cuts to social welfare, health agencies, and data surveillance are projected to increase mortality rates and escalate the US health disadvantage relative to other nations.

https://t.co/Ge3gzSR5vr

[Abier @abierkhatib]

Trump’s “victory timeline” claims.

Mar 3: "We won the war."
Mar 7: "We defeated Iran."
Mar 9: "We must attack Iran."
Mar 9: "The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully."
Mar 11: “You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won. In ​the first hour it was over.” Mar 12: "We did win, but we haven't won completely yet."
Mar 13: "We won the war."
Mar 14: "Please help us."
Mar 15: "If you don't help us, I will certainly remember it."
Mar 16: "Actually, we don't need any help at all."
Mar 16: "I was just testing to see who's listening to me."
Mar 16: "If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad."
Mar 17: "We neither need nor want NATO's help."
Mar 17: "I don't need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO."
Mar 18: "Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 19: "US allies need to get a grip - step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 20: "NATO are cowards."
Mar 21: "The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it, we don't need to open it."
Mar 22: "This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait"
Mar 22: "Iran is Dead"

Mar 23: "We had very good and productive talks with Iran."
Mar 24: "We’re making progress."
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.” Mar 26: "Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away."
Mar 27: "We don’t have to be there for NATO."
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: "Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences."
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was "very close" and that Iran would "do the right thing"
Apr 1: "We’ll see what happens very soon."
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: "Something big is going to happen."
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply "immediately" or face further consequences.

Apr 5: "Open the fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
😂

[Andrea @Andre_1791]

le privatizzazioni spiegate bene

[PSOE @PSOE]

Patriotismo es oponerse a una guerra ilegal que en nada beneficia a los intereses de los españoles ni de los europeos.

España es hoy una referencia internacional en defensa de la paz y el derecho internacional.

En un mundo incierto y carente de empatía, es un orgullo ser español.

@sanchezcastejon

[Ottavia Amato @Ottavia]

Sign now https://t.co/9AhQTYxK1d

[Iratxe García Pérez /❤️ @IratxeGarper]

Israel’s decision to expand the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism in the West Bank is a grave violation of fundamental rights

Israeli authorities must repeal this infamous law, and the Council must act immediately, including suspending the EU-Israel Agreement

[Euractiv @Euractiv]

Childhood myopia is rising fast across Europe, yet remains overlooked. Without action, half of Western school‑leavers may be myopic by 2035. Proven solutions exist: more outdoor time and regular vision checks. EU policy must embed children’s eye health.

[Stefano Mazzurana @Ste_Mazzu]

Da 2 anni e mezzo stermina centinaia di persone al giorno a Gaza, Cisgiordania, Libano ecc. con più lena di prima, ma (timide) critiche a Israele da parte del potere occidentale vengono solo quando non si limita a colpire le razze e religioni inferiori

[TheSkepticalReader 🎯 @max1ci6]

TRUST THE PLAN

Vi invito a guardare questo spezzone di tre minuti tratto dal film W. di Oliver Stone, del 2008.
Immagino che pochi lo conoscano, poiché han fatto di tutto per distribuirlo poco e male. Il film è stato bandito in molti paesi appartenenti al blocco filo-americano

[Ottavia Amato @Ottavia]

“Being vulnerable is a way to become invulnerable.”

https://t.co/HC9aoDXyNp

[Ottavia Amato @Ottavia]

Ok, i tempi sono un po’ lunghi, ma allora l’Unione Europea ci sente ancora