Tiresia: A code for molecular electronic continuum states and photoionization

The Tiresia program [1] provides access to numerically accurate solutions of the one-particle Schrödinger equation for highly excited states of complex polyatomic molecules, both bound and continuum, that cannot be described by conventional Quantum Chemistry approaches. It is based on an expansion of the required solution in a local multicentric basis set, with primitive functions built as products of a radial B-spline times a real spherical harmonic. In conjunction with Density Functional Theory (DFT), it has been extensively employed in a large variety of photoionization studies, also for rather large systems. Highly excited bound states as well as wavepacket propagation can also be accurately described. In fact, the flexibility of the basis essentially allows accurate solutions of linear operator equations, like Poisson or inhomogeneous perturbative equations, which are employed in the code. The program is parallelized with standard MPI-I instructions and makes extensive use of the Scalapack linear algebra library. Ancillary programs are available for the evaluation of photoionization cross sections and angular distributions from randomly to fully oriented molecules

Mass-change And Geosciences International Constellation (MAGIC) expected impact on science and applications

The joint ESA/NASA Mass-change And Geosciences International Constellation (MAGIC) has the objective to extend time series from previous gravity missions, including an improvement of accuracy and spatio-temporal resolution. The long-term monitoring of Earth’s gravity field carries information on mass-change induced by water cycle, climate change, and mass transport processes between atmosphere, cryosphere, oceans and solid Earth. MAGIC will be composed of two satellite pairs flying in different orbit planes. The NASA/DLR–led first pair (P1) is expected to be in a near-polar orbit around 500 km of altitude; while the second ESA–led pair (P2) is expected to be in an inclined orbit of 65–70 degrees at approximately 400 km altitude. The ESA–led pair P2 Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) shall be launched after P1 in a staggered manner to form the MAGIC constellation. The addition of an inclined pair shall lead to reduction of temporal aliasing effects and consequently of reliance on de-aliasing models and post-processing. The main novelty of the MAGIC constellation is the delivery of mass-change products at higher spatial resolution, temporal (i.e. sub–weekly) resolution, shorter latency, and higher accuracy than GRACE and GRACE-FO. This will pave the way to new science applications and operational services. In this article, an overview of various fields of science and service applications for hydrology, cryosphere, oceanography, solid Earth, climate change and geodesy is provided. These thematic fields and newly enabled applications and services were analysed in the frame of the initial ESA Science Support activities for MAGIC. The analyses of MAGIC scenarios for different application areas in the field of geosciences confirmed that the double-pair configuration will significantly enlarge the number of observable mass-change phenomena by resolving smaller spatial scales with an uncertainty that satisfies evolved user requirements expressed by international bodies such as IUGG. The required uncertainty levels of dedicated thematic fields met by MAGIC unfiltered Level-2 products will benefit hydrological applications by recovering more than 90% of the major river basins worldwide at 260 km spatial resolution, cryosphere applications by enabling mass change signal separation in the interior of Greenland from those in the coastal zones and by resolving small-scale mass variability in challenging regions such as the Antarctic Peninsula, oceanography applications by monitoring meridional overturning circulation changes on time scales of years and decades, climate applications by detecting amplitude and phase changes of Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) after 30 years in 64% and 56% of the global land areas and solid Earth applications by lowering the Earthquake detection threshold from magnitude 8.8 to magnitude 7.4 with spatial resolution increased to 333 km

New perspective for the upscaling of plant functional response to flooding stress in salt marshes using remote sensing

Understanding the response of salt marshes to flooding is crucial to foresee the fate of these fragile ecosystems, requiring an upscaling approach. In this study we related plant species and community response to multispectral indices aiming at parsing the power of remote sensing to detect the environmental stress due to flooding in lagoon salt marshes. We studied the response of Salicornia fruticosa (L.) L. and associated plant community along a flooding and soil texture gradient in nine lagoon salt marshes in northern Italy. We considered community (i.e., species richness, dry biomass, plant height, dry matter content) and individual traits (i.e., annual growth, pigments, and secondary metabolites) to analyze the effect of flooding depth and its interplay with soil properties. We also carried out a drone multispectral survey, to obtain remote sensing-derived vegetation indices for the upscaling of plant responses to flooding. Plant diversity, biomass and growth all declined as inundation depth increased. The increase of soil clay content exacerbated flooding stress shaping S. fruticosa growth and physiological responses. Multispectral indices were negatively related with flooding depth. We found key species traits rather than other community traits to better explain the variance of multispectral indices. In particular stem length and pigment content (i.e., betacyanin, carotenoids) were more effective than other community traits to predict the spectral indices in an upscaling perspective of salt marsh response to flooding. We proved multispectral indices to potentially capture plant growth and plant eco-physiological responses to flooding at the large scale. These results represent a first fundamental step to establish long term spatial monitoring of marsh acclimation to sea level rise with remote sensing. We further stressed the importance to focus on key species traits as mediators of the entire ecosystem changes, in an ecological upscaling perspective

Turkey-Africa Relations and Turkey’s National Role Conception as the Centre Country: Continuity or a Break with the Past?

The increase in Turkey’s visibility and power in Sub-Saharan Africa has attracted great attention. The rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AK Party, the story goes, engendered an abrupt shift from a cautious to a proactive foreign policy. We posit, however, that the seeds of Turkey’s opening to Africa date back decades and are an extension of its centre country (merkez ülke) national role conception. Turkey only appeared cautious prior to the 2000s because of resource constraints. Instead, Ankara’s political leaders of all stripes have shared a common conception of Turkey as something far bigger than the nation-state, and have fostered policies aimed at enhancing its agency of action (limited by structural and resource constraints) so as to resume Turkey’s role as Afro-Eurasia’s centre country. This national role conception coupled with an increase in Turkey’s national power since the 1980s have resulted in its opening to and subsequent engagement with Sub-Saharan Africa

Taylor and fiscal rules: When do they stabilize the economy?

We consider a New Keynesian model with nominal rigidities and fractional cash in-advance constraint on consumption expenditures. We study the stability properties of the model when Taylor rules react either to current inflation or to expected one. We account for different public sector budget identities and different fiscal policies ensuring Government solvency. Under an independent Central Bank, forward-looking Taylor rules promote sunspot fluctuations more easily than contemporaneous ones because they set in motion a mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecies. Conversely, the introduction of capital as an asset alongside public securities facilitates smoothing behavior and reduces the region of indeterminacy but brings out multiple steady states. When public sector budget identities are consolidated, the stabilization of total public liabilities reduces the likelihood of sunspot fluctuations and even rules them out in the presence of capital accumulation. Finally, we perform a complete welfare analysis allowing to rank equilibria and to identify the best policy mix to implement Pareto-superior outcomes

Imaging e caraterizzazione di tessuti fibrotici

Fibrosi è un termine generico per descrivere malattie che portano ad un incremento del tessuto connettivo. Questa patologia può portare al rimodellamento dei tessuti, alla formazione di tessuti cicatriziali permanenti e ai cambiamenti nelle proprietà meccaniche dell'organo coinvolto. La fibrosi è il risultato di un processo di guarigione delle ferite deregolamentato, che può essere causato da lesioni o diverse malattie come processi cronici o infiammatori. Essa si può verificarsi in vari organi come reni, cuore, fegato e polmone. Il lavoro qui presentato è focalizzato, in particolare, sulla fibrosi polmonare. Il polmone contiene complesse strutture di tessuto connettivo per mantenere le vie aeree aperte ed elastiche consentendo l'assorbimento di ossigeno e lo scambio di gas. In questo organo sono presenti diversi tipi di fibre come elastina, fibrina e collagene. Mentre ad esempio l'elastina viene degradata in presenza di infiammazione, la deposizione di collagene aumenta. Questa complessa interazione del meccanismo patogenetico che agisce sulla composizione e sulla struttura del tessuto connettivo all'interno del polmone e la correlazione con una specifica malattia non è stata ancora studiata in dettaglio. Pertanto, lo scopo di questa tesi è quello di stabilire una pipeline multimodale per fornire un'analisi completa della fibrosi polmonare. A tal fine ho utilizzato la micro-CT a contrasto di fase per ottenere informazioni strutturali del polmone, l'istologia per mappare le regioni di deposizione di collagene, la spettroscopia infrarossa trasformata di Fourier per ottenere un'impronta chimica del tessuto e la microscopia a forza atomica per eseguire la caratterizzazione meccanica del tessuto polmonare. La novità di questo approccio non risiede nell'applicazione di singole tecniche specifiche, ma nella loro correlazione spaziale per studiare la stessa area di tessuto. Per convalidare la coerenza e i vantaggi di questa pipeline, sono stati condotti studi su due diversi modelli murini di fibrosi polmonare: uno indotto chimicamente, l'altro utilizzando topi geneticamente modificati. Sulla base delle differenze nel meccanismo patogenetico coinvolto in questi due modelli si possono ipotizzare delle differenze nella composizione della fibrosi polmonare. Pertanto, questi modelli sono stati utilizzati per testare il funzionamento della pipeline. I risultati hanno portato a concludere che entrambi i modelli mostrano forti caratteristiche di fibrosi polmonare. Lo scoring istologico tipicamente applicato tuttavia consente di distinguerli. Applicando la pipeline di analisi qui presentata, sono state riscontrate differenze significative tra le regioni fibrotiche nei due modelli. Pertanto, credo che questo nuovo metodo presenti uno strumento vitale per l'analisi di campioni di tessuto di varia origine.Fibrosis is a general term to describe diseases that lead to an increase of connective tissue. This may lead to tissue remodelling, formation of permanent scar tissue and changes in the mechanical properties of the organ involved. Fibrosis is a result of deregulated wound healing process, which can be caused by injuries or various diseases, as well as chronic or inflammatory processes. Fibrosis can occur in various organs such as kidneys, heart, liver and lungs. The here presented work is focused on lung fibrosis. The lungs contain complex connective tissue structures whose function is to keep the airways open and elastic, thus enabling oxygen uptake and gas exchange. Several di↵erent fibre types such as elastin, fibrin and collagen are present within said connective tissue, and aid the aforementioned processes. However, they exhibit di↵erent responses, for instance while elastin degrades during inflammation, collagen deposition increases. This complex interplay of pathomechanisms acting on the composition and structure of the connective tissue within the lungs and the correlation to a specific disease has not yet been studied in detail. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to establish a multi- modal analysis pipeline to provide a comprehensive analysis of lung fibrosis. To this end I utilized phase contrast micro-computed tomography to obtain structural information of the lung, histology to map the regions of collagen deposition, Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy to obtain the chemical fingerprint of a tissue, and atomic force microscopy to perform mechanical characterization of a tissue. The novelty of this approach does not lie in the application of specific single techniques, but in their spatial correlation to study the same tissue area. To validate the consistency and benefits of the pipeline, I performed studies on two di↵erent mouse models for lung fibrosis - one chemically induced, one using genetically modified mice. Based on the di↵erences in the involved pathomechanism in those two models, di↵erences in the composition of the lung fibrosis can also be assumed. Thus, these models were used to show-case the performance of the developed pipeline. I found that both models showed strong features of lung fibrosis. However, the typically applied histological scoring cannot distinguish between them. By applying the here presented analysis pipeline, I found significant differences between the fibrotic regions of the two models. Thus, I argue that this novel method presents a vital tool for the analysis of tissue specimens of various origin

Measurement of the production cross section for a W boson in association with a charm quark in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV

The strange quark content of the proton is probed through the measurement of the production cross section for aWboson and a charm (c) quark in proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The W bosons are identified through their leptonic decays to an electron or a muon, and a neutrino. Charm jets are tagged using the presence of a muon or a secondary vertex inside the jet. The W + c production cross section and the cross section ratio R± c= σ(W+ + ̄c)/σ (W− + c) are measured inclusively and differentially as functions of the transverse. momentum and the pseudorapidity of the lepton originating from theWboson decay. The precision of the measurements is improved with respect to previous studies, reaching 1% in R± c = 0.950±0.005 (stat)±0.010 (syst). The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions up to next-to-nextto- leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics

Dental Treatment in Special Needs Patients and Uncooperative Young Children: A Retrospective Study

Background and Objectives: Special Needs Patients (SNPs) and young non-collaborative children are more predisposed to develop oral pathologies due to poor collaboration and scarce access to dental treatment. The aim of this retrospective study was to analyze a sample of SNPs who received dental treatments either under general anesthesia (GA) or deep sedation (DS) over a period of 6 years. The number and type of procedure were analyzed. Materials and Methods: In total, 131 patients were included and mostly (>90%) treated under GA. Patients were either uncooperative and phobic (Group 1) or affected by mental, behavioral, and neurological disorders (Group 2), diseases of the nervous system (Group 3), or developmental anomalies (Group 4). Results: Patients in Group 2 required more invasive dental treatments than those in the other groups. Therapies were mainly preventive and restorative, except in Groups 3 and 4, where extractions were more frequent. The type of dental treatment significantly varied according to age and systemic condition. Only 5.3% of the patients needed a second intervention, despite only 17.6% of patients respecting the scheduled follow-up. Conclusions: Treatment under GA is effective, but the poor adherence to follow-ups and the risk of reintervention should be contrasted by improving the perception by parents/guardians of the importance of oral hygiene and periodic visits

Travel and tourism sharing platforms: governance and monetization strategies

The emergence of sharing platforms in travel and tourism is an important transformation over the past two decades. An understanding of why some sharing economy platforms grow while others fail is an important area for travel and tourism research. Using transaction cost economics (TCE), we argue successful sharing platforms achieve both effective governance and monetization of transactions. This requires a shift from enthusiastic and committed bartering of passionate users towards a more systematic, integrated sharing platform, managed by a scaled travel or tourism corporation. The paper develops a framework explaining platform growth and offers recommendations on how transaction cost economizing and monetization can play complementary roles and can both improve platform growth and viability

Graphene growth from photo-polymerized bi-phenylthiol self-assembled monolayers

We present an enhanced methodology for the synthesis of graphene, from photo-polymerized self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of 1,1ʹ-biphenyl-4-thiol on both electropolished and oxidized copper substrates. The SAMs were subjected to a two-step process involving light-induced polymerization followed by annealing in a vacuum furnace to yield the two-dimensional solid. Comprehensive characterization using contact angle measurements, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, as well as scanning electron and transmission electron microscopy, provided conclusive evidence of growth of single-layer graphene. Notably, our findings revealed superior quality graphene on oxidized copper substrates compared to their electropolished counterparts, highlighting the impact of substrate choice on the quality of the resultant material