Surnames in local newspapers and social mobility

This paper exploits an innovative data source, the surnames contained in local newspapers during almost a century in the Italian Province of Modena (NUTS-3 level), to study the phenomenon of social mobility over time. Based on the hypothesis that the surnames that appear in the newspapers have a particular social relevance, the study of changes in the frequency distribution of the set of surnames over time allows to identify periods of greater or lower social mobility. The results show that the periods of greatest change have been the years of transition between democracy and the fascist regime and vice versa, and the 1980s. A strong regression towards the mean in the relative importance of surnames is also observed

Two Detector Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiment Kr2Det at Krasnoyarsk. Status Report

We consider status of the Kr2Det project aimed at sensitive searches for neutrino oscillations in the atmospheric neutrino mass parameter region around Dm2 ~ 3x10-3 eV2and at obtaining new information on the electron neutrino mass structure (Ue3).Comment: 4 pages in pdf file. Talk presented at NANP-2001 International Conference in Dubna, Russia, June 200

Phi meson production in near threshold proton-nucleus collisions

The cross section for production of Phi mesons in proton-nucleus reactions is calculated as a function of the target mass. The decay width of the Phi meson is affected by the change of the masses of the Phi, K+ and K- mesons in the medium. A strong attractive K- potential leads to a measurable change of the behavior of the cross section as a function of of the target mass. Comparison between the kaon and electron decay modes are made.Comment: 4 pages, 1figure, new figure, new reference

Social transfers and poverty in Europe: comparing social exclusion and targeting across welfare regimes

This paper studies whether there are systematic differences in the ability of cash transfers, belonging to different welfare systems, to reach the poor and to lift them out of poverty. We structure the analysis following the classic breakdown of the various European welfare states into welfare regimes, in search of specific features of them that can explain the variable results shown in the ability to effectively tackle economic poverty. The analysis is carried out both with a cross-sectional approach as well as using a more long-run definition of persistent poverty

The role of the N*(1535) resonance and the pi^- p --> KY amplitudes in the OZI forbidden pi N --> phi N reaction

We study the pi N --> phi N reaction close to the phi N threshold within the chiral unitary approach, by combining the pi^- p --> K^+ Sigma^-, pi^- p --> K^0 Sigma^0 and pi^- p --> K^0 Lambda amplitudes with the coupling of the phi to the K components of the final states of these reactions via quantum loops. We obtain a good agreement with experiment when the dominant pi^- p --> K^0 Lambda amplitude is constrained with its experimental cross section. We also evaluate the coupling of the N*(1535) to phi N and find a moderate coupling as a consequence of partial cancellation of the large KY components of the N*(1535). We also show that the N*(1535) pole approximation is too small to reproduce the measured cross section for the pi N --> phi N reaction.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Dispersion analysis of the nucleon form factors including meson continua

Dispersion relations provide a powerful tool to analyse the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon for all momentum transfers. Constraints from meson-nucleon scattering data, unitarity, and perturbative QCD can be included in a straightforward way. In particular, we include the 2pi, rho-pi, and KKbar continua as independent input in our analysis and provide an error band for our results. Moreover, we discuss two different methods to include the asymptotic constraints from perturbative QCD. We simultaneously analyze the world data for all four form factors in both the space-like and time-like regions and generally find good agreement with the data. We also extract the nucleon radii and the omega-NN coupling constants. For the radii, we generally find good agreement with other determinations with the exception of the electric charge radius of the proton which comes out smaller. The omega-NN vector coupling constant is determined relatively well by the fits, but for the tensor coupling constant even the sign can not be determined.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Decision analysis for the determination of biomass in the territory Tuscia Romana by geographic information system and forest management plans

The growing interest in the development of chains for the use of agroforestry biomass for energy demand, is due to the awareness they are a crucial element to mitigate the global climatic change effects. The true effort is to have a reliable estimation of biomass availability by some instruments like forest management plans, which allow to locate the forest supply and to know the forest biomass availability in a medium period. In this paper we carried out a decision analysis by geographic information system, in Tuscia Romana area comprising 11 municipalities for a total amount of 813 km2. An estimation was carried out taking into account the bibliographic data on the analyzed species, reporting the biomass in weight taken out by the forest cut utilization. A comparison was also performed in field on chestnut trees cut in a sampling area near Bracciano and in a close sawmill. The results show long, medium and short-term dynamics, but some critical points were found related to the process of estimation and to the real procurement of biomass in some years. The results suggest to be care in a possible project of a biomass plant

Plasduino: an inexpensive, general purpose data acquisition framework for educational experiments

Based on the Arduino development platform, Plasduino is an open-source data acquisition framework specifically designed for educational physics experiments. The source code, schematics and documentation are in the public domain under a GPL license and the system, streamlined for low cost and ease of use, can be replicated on the scale of a typical didactic lab with minimal effort. We describe the basic architecture of the system and illustrate its potential with some real-life examples.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, presented at the XCIX conference of the Societ\`a Italiana di Fisic