1,401 research outputs found
Istituzioni, Diseguaglianza ed Economia Sommersa: quale relazione?
In this paper, we investigate on the determinants of the size of shadow economy (SE) in Latin America. While the analysis of economic causes of SE has been extensively studied in literature, here we offer a wider prospective. In addition to overall economic development, unemployment rate, and marginal tax rate, we examine the relationships of SE with institutional indicators and income inequality. We find empirical evidence to state that the institutional background is essential to explain the size of SE; income inequality is weakly correlated with SE; the level of GDP is correlated positively with SE as percentage of official economy.Institutions, Shadow economy, Inequality, Latin America.
Foreword
The investment in space activities may be estimated in hundreds of billion of Euro and involves all G20 and BRIC countries. Why there is such a large interest, and why so many investments are allotted to space programs? Space is definitely an essential driver of economic growth. Aside from the obvious impact onto high-technology industry, many disciplines benefit from the development of space technologies. Climatology, environmental science, various medical sciences as well as telecommunication andâoff courseâmilitary applications are just few areas that need space technologies and justify the launch of satellites. Nearly a thousand satellites are currently in orbit with the aim of observing the Earth and are used for telecommunications, navigation and positioning in addition to specific scientific research and to space exploration, with missions funded by many space agencies. Man is exploring the solar system by means of satellites in orbit around Mars and Venus, and exploration is now active on the surface of Mars. China, India, Japan, Europe and United States launched spacecrafts in orbit around the Moon and the International Space Station is inhabited ever since 2003. More than 50 nations are participating in this ''colonization'' of space; they all benefit from space technologies and information gathered by satellites. Italy is participating since 1963 with a significant contribution to the activities of the International Space Station (ISS). The Chinese space program accounts for tens of launches with many satellites placed into orbit already. The successful mission of ShenzhouâX has confirmed China advances in space technologies and its ambitions for the future. In the next few years, China will launch its own Space Station, where many challenging scientific experiments in the fields of astronomy, microgravity, medicine and radiobiology will be performed. This contribution is the written, peer-reviewed version of a paper presented at the workshop ''Cosmic Rays and Radiobiology in a SinoItaly Network Strategy: First Bilateral Workshop COSMIC-RAD'' held at Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academic of Science, in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China on September 3â4, 2012
Robustness to systematics for future dark energy probes
We extend the Figure of Merit formalism usually adopted to quantify the
statistical performance of future dark energy probes to assess the robustness
of a future mission to plausible systematic bias. We introduce a new robustness
Figure of Merit which can be computed in the Fisher Matrix formalism given
arbitrary systematic biases in the observable quantities. We argue that
robustness to systematics is an important new quantity that should be taken
into account when optimizing future surveys. We illustrate our formalism with
toy examples, and apply it to future type Ia supernova (SNIa) and baryonic
acoustic oscillation (BAO) surveys. For the simplified systematic biases that
we consider, we find that SNIa are a somewhat more robust probe of dark energy
parameters than the BAO. We trace this back to a geometrical alignement of
systematic bias direction with statistical degeneracy directions in the dark
energy parameter space.Comment: Added clarifications following referee report, main results
unchanged. Matched version accepted by MNRA
CD3+CD4+LAP+Foxp3-regulatory cells of the colonic lamina propria limit disease extension in ulcerative colitis
Background and Aims: In ulcerative colitis (UC), inflammation begins in the rectum and
can extend proximally throughout the entire colon. The extension of inflammation is an
important determinant of disease course, and may be limited by the action of regulatory
T cells (Tregs). In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated the relationship between UC
extension and the proportions of CD3+CD4+Foxp3+ and CD3+CD4+LAP+Foxp3-
Tregs in the colonic lamina propria (LP) of 79 UC patients and 29 controls. The role of
these cells in UC extension was also investigated in the murine oxazolone-induced colitis
model.
Methods: Patients: Disease extension was classified according to the Montreal
classification. Where possible, endoscopic biopsies of involved and uninvolved
tissue were obtained from UC patients. Mouse model: Colitis was induced by
intrarectal oxazolone administration. Lamina propria mononuclear cells were isolated
from patient biopsies and mouse colon tissue using enzymatic method and the
percentage of CD3+CD4+Foxp3+ and CD3+CD4+LAP+Foxp3-cells evaluated by
immunofluorescence. Confocal microscopy was applied for the visualization and
quantification of CD4+LAP+ cells on tissue histological sections.
Results: In UC patients with distal colitis the proportion of LP CD3+CD4+Foxp3+
Tregs was significantly higher in inflamed tissue than uninvolved tissue. As opposite, the
proportion of LP CD3+CD4+LAP+ Tregs was significantly higher in uninvolved tissue
than involved tissue. Both LP CD3+CD4+Foxp3+ and LP CD3+CD4+LAP+ Tregs
proportion in involved tissue was significantly higher than in controls irrespective of the
extension of inflammation. In mice with oxazolone-induced distal colitis, treatment with
LAP-depleting antibody was associated with the development of extensive colitis.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that CD3+CD4+LAP+Foxp3-Tregs limit the
extension of inflammatory lesions in UC patients
How did the Great Recession affect Gender disparity in Europe? An analysis by a Multidimensional Deprivation approach
This paper analyses how the Great Recession affected the gender disparity in material and social deprivation in Europe. We propose multidimensional non-monetary indexes of absolute and relative (i.e. using peer comparisons) deprivations estimated on data from the European Quality of Life Survey for the waves 2007 and 2011. We find that the Great Recession decreased gender disparity over all the dimensions of deprivations. By applying a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we estimate that this decline of gender gap has depended on a reduction of the difference in characteristics between genders that has more than offset an increase of gender discrimination
Probing interactions within the dark matter sector via extra radiation contributions
The nature of dark matter is one of the most thrilling riddles for both cosmology and particle physics nowadays. While in the typical models the dark sector is composed only by weakly interacting massive particles, an arguably more natural scenario would include a whole set of gauge interactions which are invisible for the standard model but that are in contact with the dark matter. We present a method to constrain the number of massless gauge bosons and other relativistic particles that might be present in the dark sector using current and future cosmic microwave background data, and provide upper bounds on the size of the dark sector. We use the fact that the dark matter abundance depends on the strength of the interactions with both sectors, which allows one to relate the freeze-out temperature of the dark matter with the temperature of this cosmic background of dark gauge bosons. This relation can then be used to calculate how sizable is the impact of the relativistic dark sector in the number of degrees of freedom of the early Universe, providing an interesting and testable connection between cosmological data and direct/indirect detection experiments. The recent Planck data, in combination with other cosmic microwave background experiments and baryonic acoustic oscillations data, constrains the number of relativistic dark gauge bosons, when the freeze-out temperature of the dark matter is larger than the top mass, to be N<14 for the simplest scenarios, while those limits are slightly relaxed for the combination with the Hubble constant measurements to N<20. Future releases of Planck data are expected to reduce the uncertainty by approximately a factor of 3, which will reduce significantly the parameter space of allowed models
Inhomogeneous models of interacting dark matter and dark energy
We derive and analyze a class of spherically symmetric cosmological models
whose source is an interactive mixture of inhomogeneous cold dark matter (DM)
and a generic homogeneous dark energy (DE) fluid. If the DE fluid corresponds
to a quintessense scalar field, the interaction term can be associated with a
well motivated non--minimal coupling to the DM component. By constructing a
suitable volume average of the DM component we obtain a Friedman evolution
equation relating this average density with an average Hubble scalar, with the
DE component playing the role of a repulsive and time-dependent term.
Once we select an ``equation of state'' linking the energy density () and
pressure () of the DE fluid, as well as a free function governing the radial
dependence, the models become fully determinate and can be applied to known
specific DE sources, such as quintessense scalar fields or tachyonic fluids.
Considering the simple equation of state with , we show that the free parameters and boundary conditions can be selected
for an adequate description of a local DM overdensity evolving in a suitable
cosmic background that accurately fits current observational data. While a DE
dominated scenario emerges in the asymptotic future, with total and
tending respectively to 1 and -1/2 for all cosmic observers, the effects of
inhomogeneity and anisotropy yield different local behavior and evolution rates
for these parameters in the local overdense region. We suggest that the models
presented can be directly applied to explore the effects of various DE
formalisms on local DM cosmological inhomogeneities.Comment: 15 pages, revtex4, 10 eps figure
ISW-LSS cross-correlation in coupled Dark Energy models with massive neutrinos
We provide an exhaustive analysis of the Integrated Sach-Wolfe effect (ISW)
in the context of coupled Dark Energy cosmologies where a component of massive
neutrinos is also present. We focus on the effects of both the coupling between
Dark Matter and Dark Energy and of the neutrino mass on the cross-correlation
between galaxy/quasar distributions and ISW effect. We provide a simple
expression to appropriately rescale the galaxy bias when comparing different
cosmologies. Theoretical predictions of the cross-correlation function are then
compared with observational data. We find that, while it is not possible to
distinguish among the models at low redshifts, discrepancies between coupled
models and CDM increase with . In spite of this, current data alone
seems not able to distinguish between coupled models and CDM. However,
we show that upcoming galaxy surveys will permit tomographic analysis which
allow to better discriminate among the models. We discuss the effects on
cross-correlation measurements of ignoring galaxy bias evolution, b(z), and
magnification bias correction and provide fitting formulae for b(z) for the
cosmologies considered. We compare three different tomographic schemes and
investigate how the expected signal to noise ratio, snr, of the ISW-LSS
cross-correlation changes when increasing the number of tomographic bins. The
dependence of snr on the area of the survey and the survey shot noise is also
discussed.Comment: 18 pages, 23 figures. Several major extensions. New sections and
figures was added. ApJ in prin
Down-regulation of the Lamin A/C in neuroblastoma triggers the expansion of tumor initiating cells
Tumor-initiating cells constitute a population within a tumor mass that shares properties with normal stem cells and is considered responsible for therapy failure in many cancers. We have previously demonstrated that knockdown of the nuclear envelope component Lamin A/C in human neuroblastoma cells inhibits retinoic acid-mediated differentiation and results in a more aggressive phenotype. In addition, Lamin A/C is often lost in advanced tumors and changes in the nuclear envelope composition occur during tumor progression. Based on our previous data and considering that Lamin A/C is expressed in differentiated tissues, we hypothesize that the lack of Lamin A/C could predispose cells toward a stem-like phenotype, thus influencing the development of tumor-initiating cells in neuroblastoma. This paper demonstrates that knockdown of Lamin A/C triggers the development of a tumor-initiating cell population with self-renewing features in human neuroblastoma cells. We also demonstrates that the development of TICs is due to an increased expression of MYCN gene and that in neuroblastoma exists an inverse relationship between LMNA and MYCN expression
The effects of biochar and its combination with compost on lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) growth, soil properties, and soil microbial activity and abundance
Impacts of biochar application in combination with organic fertilizer, such as compost, are not fully understood. In this study, we tested the effects of biochar amendment, compost addition, and their combination on lettuce plants grown in a soil poor in nutrients; soil microbiological, chemical, and physical characteristics were analyzed, together with plant growth and physiology. An initial screening was also done to evaluate the effect of biochar and compost toxicity, using cress plants and earthworms. Results showed that compost amendment had clear and positive effects on plant growth and yield and on soil chemical characteristics. However, we demonstrated that also the biochar alone stimulated lettuce leaves number and total biomass, improving soil total nitrogen and phosphorus contents, as well as total carbon, and enhancing related microbial communities. Nevertheless, combining biochar and compost, no positive synergic and summative effects were observed. Our results thus demonstrate that in a soil poor in nutrients the biochar alone could be effectively used to enhance soil fertility and plant growth and biomass yield. However, we can speculate that the combination of compost and biochar may enhance and sustain soil biophysical and chemical characteristics and improve crop productivity over time
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