Imperfect justice : Fritz Lang's Fury (1936) and cinema's use of the trial form

This essay examines Fritz Lang's portrayal and use of justice in his first Hollywood film, Fury (1936) a film in which the main character, Joe Wilson (played by Spencer Tracy) is mistakenly arrested for a crime he did not commit. Lang was one of many notable German émigrés who fled Nazi Germany for America and eventually Hollywood. He returned on several occasions to the theme of justice, which is my starting point for this article. Before analysing Fury in detail, in particular its final trial scene, the article compares the film briefly to other Lang films about the law such as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Lang's conception of justice differs from the dominant Hollywood view of the law, a realisation that is discussed in relation to other depictions of the law in Hollywood (such as Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird). In Lang's cinema, the law is not a fixed, stable and trustworthy institution, but rather one that is gullible and open to abuse. Lang places more faith in notions of personal moral justice, which win out in the end in Fury. This article also contextualises Fury and the work of Fritz Lang within existing discussions of the law and film, from which Lang is largely and notably absent

A SMARC Effect for Loudness

Various reports suggest that the pitch height of musical tones may be represented along a mental space, with lower pitch heights represented on the left or lower sectors and higher pitch heights represented on the right or upper sectors of the mental space. Given that in Western languages the loudness of tones is often addressed spatially, with loud sounds referred to as \u201chigh\u201d and quiet sounds referred to as \u201clow,\u201d here we investigated whether loudness might also have a spatial representation. Participants judged whether a tone was louder or quieter than a reference tone, by pressing two keys: one at the top and the other at the bottom of a response box. Participants were faster in a situation where they pressed the key at the top to report louder sounds, and the key at the bottom to report quieter sounds, than vice versa. This result supports the view that loudness, like other types of magnitudes, might be represented spatially

Essays in Health Economics: Applied and Theoretical Approaches

the present report illustrates the research path developed during the PhD program in Economics at the University of Genova and discuss its results. The report consists of three independent chapters which reflect the chronological order of the activities carried out during the program. In the first 2 chapters, two articles are discussed. They belong to the research field inaugurated by Townsend (1987), that is, the analysis of deprivation in urban contexts and the relation between socio economic conditions and health status. The first article consists in a detailed analysis of the distribution of deprivation in the metropolitan city of Genoa and of its relationship with the health status of the resident population, represented by a generic measure of health such as premature mortality. Information on 14 variables used to assess deprivation was available at the level of the Unit\ue0 Urbanistiche. These are small administrative units with territorial homogeneity and historical and cultural traditions which appear to be suitable for statistical analyses. An exploratory factorial analysis identified two groups of variables which, according to definitions in the literature, identify the two dimensions of deprivation, material deprivation and social deprivation. For each dimension, two indices were calculated on the basis of two non-compensatory methodologies, the Mazziotta Pareto Index and the Pena Distance Index. Health status was measured through a measure of premature mortality, measured through the calculation of age-standardized SMR. The calculation of the attributable risk was used to evaluate the proportion of the excess mortality observed in various areas which can be attributable to deprivation, and a geographical analysis is presented. The results of the work, in line with the available evidence, confirm the association between material deprivation and premature mortality, but fail to show a relationship with social deprivation. The second article presents the results of an analysis of deprivation in Argentine urban areas, with the aim of assessing the presence of a relationship with the average health status of the residents Based on data extracted from the 2017 Survey on Permanent Families in Argentina (EPH), a continuous survey carried out on 32 urban areas in Argentina, five variables were identified, four relating to material and the fifth to social deprivation. The Mazziotta-Pareto Adjusted Index was calculated to provide a synthetic and quantitative measure of the level of deprivation. An analysis of hierarchical clusters was carried out to group different urban areas into deprivation classes and analyse the state of health. The primary measure of the health status used in this study was Life Expectancy at birth. The results, in line with the literature, allow to conclude that the proposed mixed deprivation index accounts for a significant proportion of the variability in Life expectancy at birth across urban areas. In the third chapter , a study is presented that was developed in in the research field of contract theory. In particular, it refers to contracts in the presence of information asymmetry and the consequent moral hazards and it is aimed at providing policy makers with a tool for an informed use of resources while identifying the sources of inefficiency and waste. The study is focussed on the problem of defining contracts for the provision of transport services for people with disabilities in a Principal-Agent context. The main issues derive from the hidden actions of the agent and the uncertainty which is due to the type and level of disability of the user which give rise to problems of incomplete information. The work consists of two parts. In the first, the conceptual framework, the theoretical tools and the main assumptions are presented, including: the description of a principal-agent relation under asymmetric information; the optimization problem of the principal; the description of the causal variables, which are the effort applied by the agent in the supply of the service and the disability condition of the user, which, in general terms, is referred to as "complexity"; the statistical tool used to model the probability related to the uncertainty which characterizes the service analysed, which is the logistic function; the relation between independent variables and outcome variable; and the agent\u2019s risk aversion. The second part of the study includes the description of two empirical models which, through various simulations, analyse how causal variables affect the probability of the positive result that is the regular performance of the transport service, the expected principal expenditure and the expected agent utility. The results suggest that, as expected, the more complex the disability condition of the user is, the greater expected expenditure of resources is, but the analysis of the dynamics of the contract, which has actually highlighted the opportunity for unfair behaviours of the agent, suggests that moral hazard is stronger in situations where the user is less complex. As the user\u2019s level of disability increases, the agent is less inclined to implement opportunistic behaviours as the uncertainty of the final result increases exogenously

Obesity and craniopharyngioma.

An epidemic of pediatric obesity has occurred across the world in recent years. There are subgroups within the population at high-risk of becoming obese and especially of having experience of precocious cardiovascular and metabolic co-morbidities of obesity. One of these subgroups comprises patients treated for childhood cancers and namely survivors of craniopharyngioma. The high incidence of obesity in this group makes these patients an important disease model to better understand the metabolic disturbances and the mechanisms of weight gain among cancer survivors. The hypothalamic-pituitary axis damage secondary to cancer therapies or to primary tumor location affect long-term outcomes. Nevertheless, the aetiology of obesity in craniopharyngioma is not yet fully understood. The present review has the aim of summarizing the published data and examining the most accepted mechanisms and main predisposing factors related to weight gain in this particular population

Performance of the CMS Pixel Detector at an upgraded LHC

The CMS experiment will include a pixel detector for pattern recognition and vertexing. It will consist of three barrel layers and two endcaps on each side, providing three space-points up to a pseudoraditity of 2.1. Taking into account the expected limitations of its performance in the LHC environment an 8-9 layer pixel detector for an upgraded LHC is discussed.Comment: Contribution to the 10th European Symposium on Semiconductor Detectors, June 12 - 16, 2005 in Wildbad Kreuth, Germany. 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Referee's comments implemente

Aménagements de défense littorale et dynamique côtière : exemple de la partie orientale du delta du Rhône (France méridionale)

Le présent travail se donne pour but d'effectuer un bilan des aménagements littoraux et de leur rôle dans la dynamique sédimentaire côtière actuelle. À ce titre, la partie orientale du delta du Rhône représente un excellent laboratoire d'étude ; de part et d'autre de l'embouchure du fleuve, la majeure partie du littoral est aujourd'hui aménagée. Les infrastructures présentent une grande hétérogénéité dans l'âge et les méthodes d'aménagement. Elles reflètent des problématiques et des enjeux différents mais elles sont également le fruit d'une évolution des mentalités et des techniques au cours des dernières décennies (Miossec, 1995). Dans un premier temps, nous retracerons l'historique de ces aménagements. Dans un second temps, nous analyserons l'efficacité de ces derniers en insistant sur le contexte morphosédimentaire dans lequel ils se situent et son évolution tendancielle

Experimental measurements of water molecule binding energies for the second and third solvation shells of [Ca(H₂O)n]2+ complexes

Further understanding of the biological role of the Ca2+ ion in an aqueous environment requires quantitative measurements of both the short and long range interactions experienced by the ion in an aqueous medium. Here we present experimental measurements of binding energies for water molecules occupying the second and, quite possibly, the third solvation shell surrounding a central Ca2+ ion in [Ca(H2O)n]2+ complexes. Results for these large, previously inaccessible, complexes have come from the application of finite heat bath theory to kinetic energy measurements following unimolecular decay. Even at n = 20 the results show water molecules to be more strongly bound to Ca2+ than would be expected just from the presence of an extended network of hydrogen bonds. For n > 10, there is very good agreement between the experimental binding energies and recently published DFT calculations. Comparisons are made with similar data recorded for [Ca(NH3)n]2+ and [Ca(CH3OH)n]2+ complexes