SUMMARY In a series of 50 patients with cerebrovascular lesions (demonstrated with CT scan), seven patients had lesions located in the basal ganglia and/or thalamus. All these seven patients were apractic. Ideomotor apraxia was present in all patients; five also had constructional apraxia, and one had bucco-facial apraxia. None of the patients had utilisation apraxia. These observations indicated that apraxia is not only a "high cerebral (cortical) function", but may depend also on the integrity of subcortical circuits and structures.

In recent years, Lake Trasimeno (Central Italy) has been affected by massive chironomid swarms that have been a serious nuisance to inhabitants and tourists. The introduction of 'tofo lamps', to divert chironomid midges from inhabited areas, has exploited the natural attraction that these insects have for artificial light. These tofo lamps had a high white light intensity (450 W) and were equipped with an external net that imitates the fish net, called 'tofo'. The attractive efficiency of such lamps was tested in the summers of 2007, 2008 and 2009 by monitoring these devices in areas on eastern (S. Feliciano) and western (Castiglione del Lago) sides of Lake Trasimeno. The most attracted taxa included the species causing a serious nuisance, i.e. the large-sized Chironomus plumosus, and the small-sized Tanypus punctipennis and Procladius sp. In summer, massive swarms of the last two taxa preceded those of C. plumosus. Female chironomids were much more attracted than were males by the artificial white light, with a sex ratio much lower than 1. In addition, the percentage of gravid females of C. plumosus was higher than that of females not carrying eggs. Artificial lights were confirmed as effective in diverting the pestiferous chironomids, a feature that should be carefully considered in order to limit the nuisance from these insects and to avoid spreading insecticides in natural environments.

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Pulmonary ThromboEmolism (PTE) is an important disease for legal medicine. Because of their sudden lethal onset, generally medicolegal autopsies show few clinical information when PTE is the cause of death. During medicolegal autopsies, the autopsy operator must answer to important questions. For example, autopsy operator can need to assess the casual relationship between PTE and recent accident, such as trauma or long air travel. Furthermore, the autopsy operator needs to investigate the pathology of PTE as a cause of sudden cardiovascular death. It is relatively simple to confirm a fatal massive thromboembolus in the initial stage of thoracic investigations, but sometimes it might be difficult to distinguish this from postmortem clot. In such cases histopathological examination can help in the differentiation. Histological examination is also required for observation of chronological changes of the thrombi. Chronological evaluation is an important factor especially to determine whether the death coincides with the date of a specific accident/event or instead there is an earlier onset of PTE. In addition, histological sections sometimes show additional information, such as tumor fragments in cases of malignancy or small fragments of bone marrow in cases of active resuscitation, that can be useful in a medicolegal scenario. Furthermore, new diagnostic tools are arising, which they can be very helpful in the individuation of this frequently underdiagnosed disease. The goal of our work is to investigate these aspects through the review of the recent literature.

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