Parkinsonian toxin-induced oxidative stress inhibits basal autophagy in astrocytes via NQO2/quinone oxidoreductase 2: Implications for neuroprotection

open12openJanda, Elzbieta; Lascala, Antonella; Carresi, Cristina; Parafati, Maddalena; Aprigliano, Serafina; Russo, Vanessa; Savoia, Claudia; Ziviani, Elena; Musolino, VINCENZO MARIA; Morani, Federica; Isidoro, Ciro; Mollace, VincenzoJanda, Elzbieta; Lascala, Antonella; Carresi, Cristina; Parafati, Maddalena; Aprigliano, Serafina; Russo, Vanessa; Savoia, Claudia; Ziviani, Elena; Musolino, VINCENZO MARIA; Morani, Federica; Isidoro, Ciro; Mollace, Vincenz

Incentives to Efficient Investment Decisions in Agricultural Cooperatives

Recent studies have questioned the competitiveness of agricultural cooperatives in an industrialized food system, based on empirical results and economic theory. New organizational institutions have been proposed to overcome the cooperative main weaknesses (the so called new generation cooperatives). In this paper, we provide a simple model based on a financial approach to address the issue of cooperative competitiveness and to assess the investment efficiency of both traditional and new generation cooperatives. The main conclusions of the analysis are: i) cooperatives (both traditional and new generation ones) may have incentive to adopt projects that do not maximize the Net Present Value of the firm ii) the institutions of new generation cooperatives are not sufficient to ensure net present value maximization, even though they address some of the main concerns of traditional cooperatives iii) traditional cooperatives may have a competitive advantage in businesses that require the aggregation of a large number of farmers.agricultural cooperatives, investment efficiency, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Q13, Q14,

The Crisis of Small Farms in Central Italy: Can Farmer Turnover Slow Down the Downfall?

We use original data to assess if the current incentives to farmer turnover may help the competitiveness of small farms in the Lazio Region (central Italy). Our results show that substantial changes in the policy may be needed. The paper analyzes sharp declining trend in small farm number, discusses its causes and evaluates the policies that have been adopted to stop or slow down this downfall. The regional policy makers consider the ageing of the farmers is a key determinant of the decline of small farms. Consequently, they have designed an incentive policy to generational turnover mainly based on installation payments. Given our empirical findings we conclude that this policy may fail to achieve the stated objectives. Firstly, farms that had a generational turnover in the last seven years do not show higher propensity to investment than the control group. These results suggest that farmers’ turnover per se may fail to increase the competitiveness of small farms. Secondly, in almost half of the cases the change in ownership is the result of a long process. Thus the timing of the policy may be wrong. Thirdly the policy is difficult to monitor and opportunistic behavior is possible.Generational turnover in Agriculture, Installation payments, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q10, Q18,

Modeling Processor Market Power and the Incidence of Agricultural Policy: A Non-parametric Approach

Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy,

A looming revolution: Implications of self-generation for the risk exposure of retailers. ESRI WP597, September 2018

Managing the risk associated with uncertain load has always been a challenge for retailers in electricity markets. Yet the load variability has been largely predictable in the past, especially when aggregating a large number of consumers. In contrast, the increasing penetration of unpredictable, small-scale electricity generation by consumers, i.e. self-generation, constitutes a new and yet greater volume risk. Using value-at-risk metrics and Monte Carlo simulations based on German historical loads and prices, the contribution of decentralized solar PV self-generation to retailers’ load and revenue risks is assessed. This analysis has implications for the consumers’ welfare and the overall efficiency of electricity markets

Is Inverse Demand Perverse?

Our non-representative sample of 245 undergraduates had significantly lower scores on questions presented in the standard heterogeneous form (i.e., Direct Demand equation and Inverse Demand graph) than on questions presented in non-standard homogenous forms. This result, which holds for advanced students, highlights one reason why 95 percent of students in economics principles classes do not enter the major---economics can be gratuitously mathematical. We argue that the Inverse Demand standard hurts rather than helps economics when it is used in early courses, but that professors have no incentive to change their methods. We recommend that early classes use either no graphs or a homogenous combination of graph and equation. The standard should be introduced later, when benefits outweigh costs.Demand and Price Analysis,

Asymptotic-Preserving Monte Carlo methods for transport equations in the diffusive limit

We develop a new Monte Carlo method that solves hyperbolic transport equations with stiff terms, characterized by a (small) scaling parameter. In particular, we focus on systems which lead to a reduced problem of parabolic type in the limit when the scaling parameter tends to zero. Classical Monte Carlo methods suffer of severe time step limitations in these situations, due to the fact that the characteristic speeds go to infinity in the diffusion limit. This makes the problem a real challenge, since the scaling parameter may differ by several orders of magnitude in the domain. To circumvent these time step limitations, we construct a new, asymptotic-preserving Monte Carlo method that is stable independently of the scaling parameter and degenerates to a standard probabilistic approach for solving the limiting equation in the diffusion limit. The method uses an implicit time discretization to formulate a modified equation in which the characteristic speeds do not grow indefinitely when the scaling factor tends to zero. The resulting modified equation can readily be discretized by a Monte Carlo scheme, in which the particles combine a finite propagation speed with a time-step dependent diffusion term. We show the performance of the method by comparing it with standard (deterministic) approaches in the literature