Effects of ambient temperature on mechanomyography of resting quadriceps muscle

It has been speculated that resting muscle mechanical activity, also known as minor tremor, microvibration, and thermoregulatory tonus, has evolved to maintain core temperature in homeotherms, and may play a role in nonshivering thermogenesis. This experiment was done to determine whether resting muscle mechanical activity increases with decreasing ambient temperature. We cooled 20 healthy, human, resting, supine subjects from an ambient temperature of 40° to 12 °C over 65 min. Core temperature, midquadriceps mechanomyography, surface electromyography, and oxygen consumption ([Formula: see text]O2) were recorded. Resting muscle mechanical and electrical activity in the absence of shivering increased significantly at temperatures below 21.5 °C. Women defended core temperature more effectively than men, and showed increased resting muscle activity earlier than men. Metabolism measured by [Formula: see text]O2 correlated with resting muscle mechanical activity (R = 0.65; p = 0.01). Resting muscle mechanical activity may have evolved, in part, to maintain core temperature in the face of mild cooling.

The Coming of Age of Italian Democracy Part I: Literature on Italian Elections 1992–94

For The Last Fifty Years, Italian Politics Have Been remarkably static and predictable: one party (the Christian Democrats) always came out on top, while the Left was always in opposition. Yet in the most unexpected fashion all this changed in April 1996: for the first time in the history of the Italian Republic, a left-wing government has been returned. While the historial significance of the 1996 elections cannot be disputed, it is much more difficult to explain the causes of such radical political change. Compared to the results of the 1996 elections, the elections of 1992 now seem little more than a minor tremor, yet one could argue that the tremors felt in 1992 were part of the same process that delivered the real earthquake four years later. Therefore in searching for an explanation of the recent unexpected political changes in Italy, one should start from the 1992 elections.