Well-Being Gender Budgets: italian local governments cases

This paper implements the methodological tools developed at regional and local governments level on gender budgets, using Sen and Nussbaum capability approach to design Well-Being Gender Budgets (WBGB). Following the methods first discussed in Addabbo, Lanzi and Picchio “On Sustainable Human Development: Gender Auditing in a Capability Approach” (2004), the framework used in this paper is an extended reproductive well-being macro approach that includes unpaid work, focuses on gender inequalities in well-being, and uses an analytical perspective which places the process of social reproduction of the population among the structural processes of the economic system and as a fundamental condition of its sustainability.The paper is divided into four sections. After the Introduction, in the first section the perspective and method of WBGB are presented. In the second, the recent experiences of WBGB adopted in Italy at provincial district and regional level are introduced and the Italian local governments institutional context is presented. In the third, a list of capabilities, based on the administrative structure of the local governments adopting the gender budget, is proposed. In fact, the structure of the different Departments (Health, Education, Transports, etc.) is seen as the result of an historical assumption of public responsibility towards specific dimensions of residents’ well-being, such as: being healthy, educated, mobile in the territory, carer of others, etc.. The context analysis is then designed to provide empirical information on a set of effective functionings that areused to assess gender inequalities in a specific well-being domain.In the fourth section, new tools (capabilities matrices) are introduced, drawn to help public policy actors to become aware of the implications of their choices on the multidimensional well-being of the women and men living in their territory. Moreover, some examples of budgeting monetary resources, taking into account well-being policy objectives are illustrated, with particular reference to the Piedmont Region and the Rome Provincial District.The results of different Italian local-government experiments in WBGB are proposed to share a different way of approaching the assessment of the gender impact of public policies and to open a discussion on their pros and cons. We think that their tools could become a key to policy integration and a basis for social participation in a public reasoning process on well-being, but they need to be discussed in a wider forum, and the possibility of their application to other countries and at different government levels also needs to be discussed

Enzyme fingerprints of activity and stereo- and enantioselectivity from fluorogenic and chromogenic substrate arrays

A series of stereochemically and structurally diverse fluorogenic and chromogenic substrates for hydrolytic enzymes has been synthesized and used to characterize enzyme activity profiles of esterases, lipases, proteases, pepti- dases, phosphatases, and epoxide hydro- lases. The substrates used are particu- larly resilient to nonspecific reactions due to their mechanism of activation.The activities recorded with the individ- ual substrates are therefore remarkably reproducible, and enable us to use the overall pattern of activity as a specific fingerprint for the enzyme sample. Fin- gerprints of activity, and enantio- and stereoselectivity are displayed as arrays of color-scale squares that are easily analyzed visually. Such fingerprints might be useful for quality control, enzyme discovery, and possibly for addressing the issue of functional conver- gence in enzymes

Improved stereoselective synthesis of both methyl alpha- and beta-glycosides corresponding to the amino sugar component of the E ring of calicheamicin (I)(gamma 1) and esperamicin A(1)

The monosaccharide component (alpha and beta-anomer) of the E Ring of calicheamicin (I)(gamma 1) and esperamicin A(1) has been synthetized by an efficient and improved stereoselective procedure starting from methyl 2-deoxy-alpha- and beta-D-ribopyranoside. The synthetic procedure makes use, in each case, of a cyclic sulphate and of the regioselective ring opening of an intermediate activated aziridine. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Fluorescence Assay and Screening of Epoxide Opening Reactions by Nucleophiles

Terminal epoxides such as 1 react with nucleophiles (H2O, Cl-, Br-, N3-, and CN-) at the primary oxirane carbon to give mostly anti-Markovnikov-type regioisomers 5a-d. The opening products of epoxide (R)-1 with chloride (5a), bromide (5b) and azide (5c) undergo enantio- and chemoselective oxidation by horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase and NAD+ to give the corresponding ketones 7a-c, and subsequently umbelliferone 4 by beta-elimination, leading to a fluorescence increase at landa em = 460 ± 20 nm (landa ex = 360 ± 20 nm). The epoxide hydrolysis products give no signal. This enantio- and chemo-selective fluorogenic assay for epoxide opening was used to search for catalytic antibodies for nucleophilic epoxide opening raised against 1,2-azidoammonium hapten 8 as a mimic for epoxide opening by azide and against chloromethyl phosphonate hapten 9 as a mimic for the transition state of chlorohydrin formation

Stereo- and regioselectivity of cyclization reactions in conformationally restricted epoxy ketones: evaluation of C-versus O-alkylation process

The intramolecular addition reaction of metal enolates of ketones to oxiranes has been applied to a series of epoxy ketones derived from cyclohexene oxide. γ-Hydroxy ketones (γ-HKs, C-alkylation products) or hydroxy enol ethers (HEEs, O-alkylation products) are obtained, depending on the nature of the cyclic transition state in each case involved and the application of the Fürst-Plattner rule. The formation of HEEs by reaction of the same epoxy ketones under acid conditions is also described. In some cases, regioconvergent or chemoselective processes are conveniently obtained. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Efficient enantioselective synthesis of (R)-2-acetyl-2-hydroxy-5,8-dimethoxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene, the key intermediate in the synthesis of anthracycline antibiotics

A simple, efficient, enantioselective synthesis of (R)-2-acetyl-2-hydroxy-5,8-dimethoxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene, the key intermediate in the synthesis of anthracycline antibiotics, is described. The synthetic procedure starts with the Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation of 2-acetyl-5,8-dimethoxy-3,4-dihydronaphthalene: the diol obtained is regioselectively transformed into the corresponding chloroacetate which is dehalogenated and saponified to give the desired title compound in four steps with satisfactory yield (52%). No separation step is necessary at any point of the synthetic process. An efficient procedure for the synthesis of the starting enone and the stereoselectivity of the methanolysis of the intermediate chloroacetate are also reported. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved