Endogenous space in the Net era

Libre Software communities are among the most interesting and advanced socio-economic laboratories on the Net. In terms of directions of Regional Science research, this paper addresses a simple question: “Is the socio-economics of digital nets out of scope for Regional Science, or might the latter expand to a cybergeography of digitally enhanced territories ?” As for most simple questions, answers are neither so obvious nor easy. The authors start drafting one in a positive sense, focussing upon a file rouge running across the paper: endogenous spaces woven by socio-economic processes. The drafted answer declines on an Evolutionary Location Theory formulation, together with two computational modelling views. Keywords: Complex networks, Computational modelling, Economics of Internet, Endogenous spaces, Evolutionary location theory, Free or Libre Software, Path dependence, Positionality.

Effectiveness of Sand Drains in Peaty Soil in a Case of Differential Settlement Recovering

The result obtained in a case history of differential settlement recovery are reported. The effectiveness of sand drains in peaty soil is questioned. The importance and the mutual influence of the primary and secondary settlement are discussed. Remarks are made on the value of secondary settlement coefficient

Migrant workers and psychological health: A systematic review

Migrant workers show an increase in the incidence of serious, psychotic, anxiety, and post-traumatic disorders due to a series of socio-environmental variables, such as loss of social status, discrimination, and separations from the family. The purpose is to elaborate a systematic review and highlight the prevailing psychological pathologies of these workers and categories most at risk. Our research included articles published from 2009 to 2019 on the major databases (Pub Med, Cochrane Library, and Scopus) using a combination of some keywords. The online search indicated 1.228 references. Using inclusion and exclusion criteria, we analyzed 127 articles, in particular 12 reviews and 115 original articles. Principal emerging disorders from the research are depressive syndrome (poor concentration at work, feeling down, or anger and somatization), anxiety, alcohol or substance abuse, and poor sleep quality. This causes low life conditions, which is also due to marginalization from the social context and strenuous work; in fact, migrant workers may suffer verbal or physical abuse, and they are often employed in dangerous, unhealthy jobs. It is therefore essential to increase the role of occupational medicine and promote wellbeing for this vulnerable job categor

A Bootstrapped Modularised method of Global Sensitivity Analysis applied to Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) evaluates the probability of exceedance of a given earthquake intensity threshold like the Peak Ground Acceleration, at a target site for a given exposure time. The stochasticity of the occurrence of seismic events is modelled by stochastic processes and the propagation of the earthquake wave in the soil is typically evaluated by empirical relationships called Ground Motion Prediction Equations. The large uncertainty affecting PSHA is quantified by defining alternative model settings and/or model parametri-zations. In this work, we propose a novel Bootstrapped Modularised Global Sensitivity Analysis (BMGSA) method for identifying the model parameters most important for the uncertainty in PSHA, that consists in generating alternative artificial datasets by bootstrapping an available input-output dataset and aggregating the individual rankings obtained with the modularized method from each of those.The proposed method is tested on a realistic PSHA case study in Italy. The results are compared with a standard variance-based Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) method of literature. The novelty and strength of the proposed BMGSA method are both in the fact that its application only requires input-output data and not the use of a PSHA code for repeated calculations

A transcriptomic approach reveals selective ribosomal remodelling in the tumour versus the stromal compartment of metastatic colorectal cancer

Because of its high incidence and poor prognosis, colorectal cancer (CRC) represents an important health issue in several countries. As with other carcinomas, the so-called tumour microenvironment (TME) has been shown to play key roles in CRC progression and related therapeutical outcomes, even though a deeper understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms is needed to devise new treatment strategies. For some years now, omics technologies and consolidated bioinformatics pipelines have allowed scientists to access large amounts of biologically relevant information, even when starting from small tissue samples; thus, in order to shed new light upon the role of the TME in CRC, we compared the gene expression profiles of 6 independent tumour tissues (all progressed towards metastatic disease) to the expression profile of the surrounding stromata. To do this, paraffin-embedded whole tissues were first microdissected to obtain samples enriched with tumour and stromal cells, respectively. Afterwards, RNA was extracted and analysed using a microarray-based approach. A thorough bioinformatics analysis was then carried out to identify transcripts differentially expressed between the two groups and possibly enriched functional terms. Overall, 193 genes were found to be significantly downregulated in tumours compared to the paired stromata. The functional analysis of the downregulated gene list revealed three principal macro areas of interest: the extracellular matrix, cell migration, and angiogenesis. Conversely, among the upregulated genes, the main alterations detected by the functional annotation were related to the ribosomal proteins (rProteins) of both the large (60S) and small (40S) subunits of the cytosolic ribosomes. Subsequent gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) confirmed the massive overexpression of most cytosolic—but not mitochondrial—ribosome rProteins

Summer Distribution, Relative Abundance and Encounter Rates of Cetaceans in the Mediterranean Waters off Southern Italy (Western Ionian Sea and Southern Tyrrhenian Sea)

In summer 2010 and summer 2011, weekly cetacean surveys were undertaken in "passing mode", using ferries as platform of opportunity, along the "fixed line transect" between Catania and Civitavecchia (Southern Italy). Of the 20 species of cetaceans confirmed for the Mediterranean sea, 8 were sighted within the survey period: 7 species represented by Mediterranean subpopulations (Balaenoptera physalus, Physeter macrocephalus, Stenella coeruleoalba, Delphinus delphis, Grampus griseus, Tursiops truncatus and Ziphius cavirostris) and one considered visitor (Steno bredanensis). We had a total of 220 sightings during the 2010 and a total of 240 sightings in the 2011. The most frequent species was S. coeruleoalba. By the comparison of the data from the two sampling seasons, a significant increase of D. delphis sightings and a decrease of sightings of B. physalus and P. macrocephalus was observed from 2010 to 2011. While all the other species were observed in both sampling seasons, Z. cavirostris and Steno bredanensis were observed only during 2011. The presence of mixed groups of odontocetes was documented too: we sighted groups composed by S. coeruleoalba and D. delphis, by S. coeruleoalba and T. truncatus, and by S. coeruleoalba and G. griseus. The results of this research add useful information on cetacean species in a very poorly known area and highlight the need to standardize large scale and long term monitoring programs in order to detect variation in presence, abundance and distribution of cetaceans populations and understand the effect of anthropogenic factors