A human skeleton recovered from a Sicilian archaeological site and dating from the Hellenistic period (330-210 B.C.) presents a pathological pattern suggesting a transition between ankylosing spondylitis and rheumatoid arthritis, providing evidence in support of the hypothesis that rheumatoid arthritis may have recently evolved out of ankylosing spondylitis.

Ten Dasytidae species have been found to be present in the Egadi islands, one of which—Danacea hierena n. sp.—is endemic of the whole Archipelago and is here described. Excluding the new species, no other endemic has been found and the Egadi Dasytidae fauna appears to be rather similar to the Sicilian one. Dasytes croceipes Kiesenwetter, 1866 is reported new for Sicily.

This paper describes an investigation of the syntax-prosody interface in the expression of focus in Sicilian Italian. It finds evidence of a generalised reversal of the articulation of information structure, with new information often preceding old, and of intonational differentiation between focus types. Introduction A pressing question in current linguistic theory is how different components ...