Testing an approximation to large-Nc QCD with a toy model

We consider a simple model of large-Nc QCD defined by a spectrum consisting of an infinite set of equally spaced zero-width vector resonances. This model is an excellent theoretical laboratory for investigating certain approximation schemes which have been used recently in calculations of hadronic parameters, such as the Minimal Hadronic Approximation. We also comment on some of the questions concerning issues of local duality versus global duality and finite-energy sum rules.Comment: LateX file; 16 pages, 7 figure

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors

Governing agricultural migrant workers as an “emergency”: converging approaches in Northern and Southern Italian rural towns

Rosarno and Sermide are two small towns in Southern and Northern Italy, which are both part of a manual-labour circuit of agricultural work. The article presents an analysis of governance structures in these towns and, by bringing together the literature on migrants' agricultural labour and local policy-making, explores how public actors address migrant seasonal agricultural workers' needs to investigate outcomes of inclusion and exclusion. The article builds on qualitative research, conducted between 2012 and 2015, to propose a North-South intra-country comparison of local policy-making. The findings show the emergency nature of local administrations' approaches and the critical role of civil society. They highlight the extent to which responses diverge or converge in means and scale, while stressing their convergence in scope to limit migrants' visibility

On integrability of certain rank 2 sub-Riemannian structures

We discuss rank 2 sub-Riemannian structures on low-dimensional manifolds and prove that some of these structures in dimensions 6, 7 and 8 have a maximal amount of symmetry but no integrals polynomial in momenta of low degrees, except for those coming from the Killing vector fields and the Hamiltonian, thus indicating nonintegrability of the corresponding geodesic flows

Institutionalized social skill and the rise of mediating organizations in urban governance: the case of the Cleveland Housing Network

In this paper we build on an expanding literature that attempts to understand the changing organizational and institutional dimensions of contemporary urban governance. We do so by utilizing the Cleveland Housing Network as a lens through which salient characteristics of contemporary governance become visible. Doing so enables us to highlight the distinctive challenges of the multi-institutional nature of contemporary governance arrangements and “heterarchic” governance in particular. These challenges situate mediating organizations as central components of governance arrangements. Finally, by focusing on the distinctive characteristics of the organization's leaders, we demonstrate that mediating organizations are usefully thought of as institutionalized forms of the “social skill” of institutional entrepreneurs