Tax evasion and tax avoidance in the towns of the Kingdom of Naples (XV-XVIII centuries)

The phenomenon of tax fraud was rooted in the tax system of the old regime. The main reasons were: the magnitude of the number of the privileged, the negotiatory nature of fiscal relations between the Sovereign and his subjects, the decentralised management of taxation where a leading role was played in this by the intermediary bodies throughout the territory. Another factor was the autonomy enjoyed at local level, which was also a source of particularism, heterogeneity and excessive power on the part of the urban élite (Fortea Pérez). Many of these characteristics, relating specifically to sixteenth and seventeenth-century Castile, were also common to other areas of Europe as a result of jurisdictional fragmentation (Epstein, Dincecco). In order to describe the peculiar physiognomy of the Kingdom in the field of tax evasion, I shall try to answer questions on whether and how this phenomenon followed the above-mentioned centuries-old patternsEl fenómeno del fraude fiscal es inherente al sistema tributario del antiguo régimen. Las principales razones fueron: la gran cantidad de privilegiados implicados en el sistema; la naturaleza per se negociadora de las relaciones fiscales entre el soberano y sus súbditos; la gestión descentralizada de los impuestos y el papel substancial que jugaron en todo ello los organismos intermedios. Otro factor fue la autonomía de que gozaron en el ámbito local, lo que era también una fuente de particularismos, así como la heterogeneidad y el poder excesivo por parte de la élite urbana (Fortea Pérez). Muchas de estas características, específicamente relacionado con la Castilla de los siglos XVI y XVII, también eran comunes a otras zonas de Europa como resultado de la fragmentación jurisdiccional (Epstein, Dincecco). Para describir la fisonomía peculiar del Reino en el campo de la evasión fiscal, voy a tratar de responder a las preguntas sobre cómo este fenómeno siguió los viejos patrones de los mencionados siglo

Perspectives and research on play for children with disabilities. Collected papers

This book includes eight chapters reflecting various approaches towards the theme of play for children with disabilities that characterised the work of the members of the COST Action TD1309 “LUDI–Play for Children with Disabilities”. Alongside these multifaceted points of view, some theoretical aspects emerged as a common background: the ICF-CY theoretical perspective, the vision of “play for the sake of play” and play as a fundamental right

El catastro en el sur de Italia: una presencia centenaria (del siglo XV al XVIII)

This study aims to investigate the presence of cadastres in municipal finance in the 16th-17th centuries, a time when indirect taxes such as duties and gabelle had become prevalent, and census surveys were longer necessary for assessment purposes. The Kingdom of Naples, in southern Italy, was chosen as a case study due to the wealth of documentary sources still available for studying local finance. The focus of the study is the land registers of the 15th-17th centuries to try to define how they were made at the local level before the reform ordered by Charles of Bourbon in the 1740s and aims to understand how wealth was assessed, the tax base was used, and the collection mechanisms employed. Our investigation includes all the cadastral documents that can help answer these questions, without relying on a single case study as the definitive model for an entire system. The method adopted is the comparative one which takes advantage of the comparison between cases and cadastral models both the ancient ones and those of the reform of Charles of Bourbon. The key to understanding the research lies in the relationship between law and practice, especially the interplay between the laws codified by the Government through pragmatica laws, edicts, and instructions, on the one hand, and cadastral practices in force at the municipal level during a period when local particularism could benefit from sovereign respect for the customs of communities.La contribución tiene como objetivo investigar la presencia del catastro en las finanzas municipales durante los siglos XVI-XVII, época en la que parecían haber prevalecido los impuestos indirectos (aranceles y gabelas), cuya elevación no requería investigaciones censales. El Reino de Nápoles (Sur de Italia) fue elegido como caso de estudio por la riqueza de las fuentes documentales aún existentes y exploradas hasta ahora en aspectos relacionados con las finanzas locales. El objetivo de esta contribución es acercar el foco de la investigación a los catastros de los siglos XV-XVII para intentar definir cómo se realizaban a nivel local antes de la reforma deseada por Carlos de Borbón en los años 40 del siglo XVIII. Se intentará comprender cómo se valoraba la riqueza, cuál era la base imponible y cuáles eran los mecanismos de recaudación. Se investigan todos aquellos documentos catastrales que permitan dar respuesta a estas preguntas, evitando que un solo estudio de caso se eleve al modelo explicativo de todo un sistema. El método adoptado es el comparativo que aprovecha la comparación entre casos y modelos catastrales tanto los antiguos como los de la reforma de Carlos de Borbón. La principal lectura de la encuesta se refiere a la relación entre norma y práctica, es decir, a la dialéctica entre la norma codificada por los aparatos de gobierno en pragmáticas, edictos e instrucciones y la práctica catastral vigente a nivel municipal en una época en la que el particularismo local podía beneficiarse del respeto soberano por la costumbre de las comunidades

Monte Carlo simulations of soft proton flares: testing the physics with XMM-Newton

Low energy protons (<100-300 keV) in the Van Allen belt and the outer regions can enter the field of view of X-ray focusing telescopes, interact with the Wolter-I optics, and reach the focal plane. The use of special filters protects the XMM-Newton focal plane below an altitude of 70000 km, but above this limit the effect of soft protons is still present in the form of sudden flares in the count rate of the EPIC instruments, causing the loss of large amounts of observing time. We try to characterize the input proton population and the physics interaction by simulating, using the BoGEMMS framework, the proton interaction with a simplified model of the X-ray mirror module and the focal plane, and comparing the result with a real observation. The analysis of ten orbits of observations of the EPIC/pn instrument show that the detection of flares in regions far outside the radiation belt is largely influenced by the different orientation of the Earth's magnetosphere respect with XMM-Newton's orbit, confirming the solar origin of the soft proton population. The Equator-S proton spectrum at 70000 km altitude is used for the proton population entering the optics, where a combined multiple and Firsov scattering is used as physics interaction. If the thick filter is used, the soft protons in the 30-70 keV energy range are the main contributors to the simulated spectrum below 10 keV. We are able to reproduce the proton vignetting observed in real data-sets, with a 50\% decrease from the inner to the outer region, but a maximum flux of 0.01 counts cm-2 s-1 keV-1 is obtained below 10 keV, about 5 times lower than the EPIC/MOS detection and 100 times lower than the EPIC/pn one. Given the high variability of the flare intensity, we conclude that an average spectrum, based on the analysis of a full season of soft proton events is required to compare Monte Carlo simulations with real events

Organismos vivos, coletivos e políticos pela construção dos atributos da Política Nacional de Saúde Bucal

The last few decades have witnessed a growth in the value of dentists as health professionals as they act as protagonists in the construction of public health policies. This change comes from powerful and representative dentists in the Unified Health System (acronym in Portuguese is SUS). This short theoretical essay aims to bring the reader closer to the attributes necessary for the building of a social policy and draws a parallel with the National Oral Health Policy (acronym in Portuguese is PNSB). Issues such as context-oriented health policy and the National Oral Health Policy associated with the attributes of a social policy are presented in a narrative and reflective manner. In this process, the exercise of citizenship is demonstrated, emphasizing the importance of the collective role and policy of dentist surgeons in the stages of health policies in Brazil.A valorização do cirurgião dentista como um profissional da saúde que pode ser protagonista na construção de políticas públicas de saúde vem se fortalecendo nas últimas décadas. Este fortalecimento se dá pela atuação potente e representativa da odontologia no Sistema Único de Saúde. Este breve ensaio teórico tem o objetivo de aproximar o leitor aos atributos necessários para a construção de uma política social e traçar um paralelo com a Política Nacional de Saúde Bucal. Deste modo, questões como contextos produtores de uma política de saúde e a Política Nacional de Saúde Bucal associada aos atributos de uma política social são apresentadas de forma narrativa e reflexiva. Neste processo o exercício de cidadania se faz presente, ressaltando a importância do papel coletivo e político do cirurgião dentista no ciclo vivo das políticas de saúde no Brasil

Investigating emerging self-awareness : its neural underpinnings, the significance of self-recognition, and the relationship with social interactions

Up until now, self-recognition in the mirror, achieved at around 18 months, has been used to assess self-awareness in infancy. Even though the significance of this test is not universally accepted, this field has progressed very little over the last decades, in contrast to a broad volume of literature on the self in adults. However, a relationship between self-other differentiation and social cognitive abilities has been recently hypothesized, renewing the interest in mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness. Adult studies have highlighted that brain networks, instead of isolated brain areas, support self-processing. Therefore, the first two studies of this thesis validated the use of advanced connectivity analyses on infant fNIRS data. Making use of these methods, one study demonstrated that functional connectivity between regions belonging to a network that has been related to abstract self-processing in adults gradually increases over the first two years of life. The same network was found to characterise infants who recognise themselves in the mirror. In another study, crucial regions of this network were shown to be engaged during self-recognition in 18-month-olds. As social interactions have been suggested to be fundamental for the construction of the self, the last two studies of this thesis investigated the relationship between emerging self-awareness and social interactions. To test this, I focused on mimicry, known to play an important role in affiliation and in mediating relationships. One study demonstrated that emerging selfawareness may affect infants’ tendency to selectively mimic in-group members, which may indicate a possible role of self-comparison and identification processes. The last study did not find evidence for a relationship between mothers’ tendency to imitate their infants at 4 months and emerging selfawareness. Taken together, these studies enrich our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness and they represent a pioneering starting point for further investigations into this topic

Entanglement entropy from non-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations

We study the entanglement entropy in lattice field theory using a simulation algorithm based on Jarzynski's theorem. We focus on the entropic c-function for the Ising model in two and in three dimensions: after validating our algorithm against known analytical results from conformal field theory in two dimensions, we present novel results for the three-dimensional case. We show that our algorithm, which is highly parallelized on graphics processing units, allows one to precisely determine the subleading corrections to the area law, which have been investigated in many recent works. Possible generalizations of this study to other strongly coupled theories are discussed.Comment: 1+33 pages; v2: typos corrected, matches published versio