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As information and services are becoming more and more decentralized and they are often available in the cloud, an increasing number of older adults are expected to use Internet-based services –health, education, finance and others. For this reason, it seems important to plan models and/or strategies to allow the older adult population to acquire and enhance digital competencies more easily. The goal of this research is to show a blended workshop based on a Learning Management System (LMS) as a supporting tool for older adults’ digital literacy. This blended workshop was based on the adoption of an instructional model and on prior experiences of the groups of elderly that participated in the face-to-face workshops. This study involved 98 adults aged 60 and above, 72 Females (68.5 ± 6.9) and 26 Males (73.3 ± 7.4). 61 older adults participated in the face-to-face workshop (FFG) on digital literacy and 37 participated in the blended workshop (BLG). Digital literacy increased at the post-evaluation after the workshops but even more for the BLG. Likewise, in the validation of the blended workshop the results were positive regarding ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using and intention to use, which showed that older adults believe that it is useful to implement this type of supporting systems for developing their digital competencies. Hence, it is possible to conclude that older adults are capable of learning and acquiring digital literacy skills as long as they are strongly motivated or they know the functional benefits related to ICT.

Although the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is used to evaluate emotions (valence, arousal, and dominance evoked by a large set of photographs), bizarre images in works of art have not been assessed with the IAPS procedures. Understood here as strange, non-sense, and absurd mental contents or expressions accompanied by surprise and confusion emotions, bizarreness was assessed after healthy adult volunteers assigned this specified variable to 140 Grete Stern's photomontages overtly intended to illustrate strange, absurd, and non-sensical contents in dream reports. The images were presented to 21 Young Males (YM) and 30 Young Females (YF) who were instructed to use the IAPS Self-Assessment Manikin, along with an additional bizarre-to-normal scale, to evaluate their response to them. The valence and the bizarre-to-normal ratings showed a dissimilar pattern of distribution between genders. Ratings of scales were different, and a greater variation in scales occurred according to gender. When bizarreness was appraised, gender differences became more evident especially for YF, who rated half of the images as bizarre, and with a diminished feeling of control, while the neutral and normal images were deemed more pleased and controlled. Valence, bizarreness, and dominance formed a different component than arousal in both groups. Negative correlations between valence and dominance, and between valence and bizarreness were also found in both groups, plus a positive one for dominance and bizarreness in YF, along with curvilinear relationships among all scales. On a second experiment, 10 photomontages evaluated by YF as bizarre or as normal were administered to 18 Old Males (OM) and 28 Old Females (OF). OF's arousal showed less neutral evaluations than OM's. In OF the bizarre images evoked either more excitation or calmness than in OM. The distribution of the bizarre-to-normal scale was significantly different across the evaluations in YM, YF, OM, and OF. The use of this extended IAPS instrument to explore bizarreness and emotional variables in response to art images seems suitable and potentially valuable to characterize bizarre, absurd, or non-sensical mental states and their brain correlates.

Thrombotic microangiopathies (TMA) are rare but severe disorders, characterized by endothelial cell activation and thrombus formation leading to hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia and organ failure. Complement over activation in combination with defects in its regulation is described in an increasing number of TMA and if primary for the disease denominated as atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome. Although TMA predominantly affects the renal microvasculature, extra renal manifestations are observed in 20% of patients including involvement of the central nerve system, cardiovascular system, lungs, skin, skeletal muscle and gastrointestinal tract. Prompt diagnosis and treatment initiation are therefore crucial for the prognosis of disease acute phase and the long term outcome. This review summarizes the available evidence of clinical extra renal TMA manifestations and discusses the role of acute and chronic complement activation by highlighting its complex interaction with inflammation, coagulation and endothelial homeostasis.