Kaon production and propagation at intermediate relativistic energies

We systematically study $K^+$ observables in nucleus-nucleus collisions at 1-2 A GeV within the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) transport model. We compare our calculations with the KaoS data on the kaon multiplicities and spectra. In addition, the kaon collective flow is computed and compared with the FOPI and KaoS data. We show, that the elliptic kaon flow measured recently by the KaoS Collaboration is best described by using the Brown-Rho parametrization of the kaon potential ($U_K(\rho_0) \simeq 30$ MeV).Comment: 21 pages, 3 tables, 17 figures; references added; version accepted in PR

Long Run and Short Run Constraints in the Access to Private Health Care Services: Evidence from Selected European Countries

This paper aims at distinguishing long-run and short-run constraints in the access to private health care services. To this end, we apply the methodology proposed by Carneiro and Heckman (2003) to the SHARE database, a survey conducted in a number of European countries, involving some 22,000 individuals over the age of 50. Micro-data includes information on health and health consumption, and socioeconomic variables (like income and wealth). Our results show that the problem of short-run constraints in the access to private health care services could be real, especially in Italy, Greece, and to some extent Spain. Moreover, there appear to be differences in the role of credit constraints, both considering more specific services, and gender differences

An evaluation of entropy measures for microphone identification

Research findings have shown that microphones can be uniquely identified by audio recordings since physical features of the microphone components leave repeatable and distinguishable traces on the audio stream. This property can be exploited in security applications to perform the identification of a mobile phone through the built-in microphone. The problem is to determine an accurate but also efficient representation of the physical characteristics, which is not known a priori. Usually there is a trade-off between the identification accuracy and the time requested to perform the classification. Various approaches have been used in literature to deal with it, ranging from the application of handcrafted statistical features to the recent application of deep learning techniques. This paper evaluates the application of different entropy measures (Shannon Entropy, Permutation Entropy, Dispersion Entropy, Approximate Entropy, Sample Entropy, and Fuzzy Entropy) and their suitability for microphone classification. The analysis is validated against an experimental dataset of built-in microphones of 34 mobile phones, stimulated by three different audio signals. The findings show that selected entropy measures can provide a very high identification accuracy in comparison to other statistical features and that they can be robust against the presence of noise. This paper performs an extensive analysis based on filter features selection methods to identify the most discriminating entropy measures and the related hyper-parameters (e.g., embedding dimension). Results on the trade-off between accuracy and classification time are also presented

The Importance of Sustainability in the Fashion Sector: ADIDAS Case Study

In a society such as the present, characterized by an extremely consumerist lifestyle, the issue of socia

No country for young people. Poverty and Age in Italy, 1948-2018

The paper explores the changing risk of poverty for older and younger generations of Italians throughout the republican period, 1948 to the present day. We show that poverty rates have decreased steadily for all age groups, but that youth has been left behind. The risk of poverty for children aged 0-17, relative to adults over 65, has increased steadily over time: in 1977, children faced a risk of poverty 30 percent lower than the elderly, but by 2016 they are 5 times likelier to be poor than someone in the age range of their grandparents. This intergenerational reversal of fortune is unprecedented in Italy’s postWW2 history. We also assess the impact of the Great Recession on living standards by age, finding that the young have been hit hardest, particularly in Southern regions. What explains the extra poverty risk associated with young age? Our analysis points to the welfare state, which offers better protection for the elderly than it does for the young and their families. We find that the impact of cash transfers on the incidence of child poverty is considerably lower in Italy than in most comparable countries. Overall, in the last seven decades, Italy has become no country for young people

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

Past Income Scarcity and Current Perception of Financial Fragility

The aim of this paper is to test whether a temporary experience of income scarcity in the recent past affects the individual’s assessment of financial fragility over time. Using EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Condition) longitudinal data in 2010-2013 period, our results highlight that individuals who transited out of a short spell of scarcity tend to record a lower subjective ability to make ends meet than those who never experienced it during the reference period, even after two years and controlling for the current level of household income. When a more objective measure of household financial health is taken, the effect is weaker and disappears when current income is accounted for. Our results, which are robust to various robustness checks, have implications for public policies since they question the idea that helping people to leave an objective condition of income scarcity is enough to address poverty and social exclusion

Can the endometrioma be an obstacle to complete oocyte retrieval in IVF cycles? A retrospective study

Objective: The study aimed to evaluate the utility and safety of ancillary maneuvers during oocyte retrieval for patients with endometrioma that makes ovum pick-up hard due to poor ovarian surgical accessibility. Patients and methods: Cases of 251 women with ovarian endometriomas undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) in our infertility unit were retrospectively analyzed to evaluate the clinical IVF cycle outcomes after oocyte retrieval. Controls (n = 251) were age-matched women without endometriomas who underwent an uncomplicated oocyte retrieval. Results: No statistically significant differences were observed between groups except for the number of oocytes retrieved, which was higher in the control group than in the group of women with endometrioma. On the contrary, there were no differences between the experimental groups in the fertilization rate and number of embryos, and neither were there in the pregnancy and live birth rate. Moreover, the surgical complications were infrequent and similar between the two analyzed groups. Accidental or voluntary endometrioma punctures were not accompanied by increases in the risk of a pelvic infection. Conclusions: In conclusion, patients with endometrioma can undergo high-performance oocyte recovery procedures thanks to safe accessory maneuvers during the ovum pick-up