Minimal surfaces - variational theory and applications

Minimal surfaces are among the most natural objects in Differential Geometry, and have been studied for the past 250 years ever since the pioneering work of Lagrange. The subject is characterized by a profound beauty, but perhaps even more remarkably, minimal surfaces (or minimal submanifolds) have encountered striking applications in other fields, like three-dimensional topology, mathematical physics, conformal geometry, among others. Even though it has been the subject of intense activity, many basic open problems still remain. In this lecture we will survey recent advances in this area and discuss some future directions. We will give special emphasis to the variational aspects of the theory as well as to the applications to other fields.Comment: Proceedings of the ICM, Seoul 201

Deforming 3-manifolds of bounded geometry and uniformly positive scalar curvature

We prove that the moduli space of complete Riemannian metrics of bounded geometry and uniformly positive scalar curvature on an orientable 3-manifold is path-connected. This generalizes the main result of the fourth author [Mar12] in the compact case. The proof uses Ricci flow with surgery as well as arguments involving performing infinite connected sums with control on the geometry

Absenteeism, pension reforms and grandmothers

Both economic and epidemiological literature have shown that perceived high strain at work and lack of social infrastructures are good predictors of sick-leave. The latter is particularly relevant in (Mediterranean) countries where facilities for children and LTC services are relatively scarce and women are frequently asked to fill the gap. The Italian 2011 pension reform, approved under the threat of a financial crisis, significantly restricted age and seniority requirements for retirement, especially for women in private employment, who still enjoyed a much more favorable treatment than men and women in public service. We investigate whether older Italian women (still in employment) reacted to the postponement of retirement by increasing their recourse to sick-leave. The empirical analysis, based on a noteworthy administrative data set provided by the Italian Social Security Agency, offers unequivocal evidence that this has indeed been the case, in particular for grandmothers. This result lends itself to interesting policy considerations

Absenteeism, childcare and the effectiveness of pension reforms

Both economic and epidemiological literature have shown that perceived high strain at work and lack of social infrastructures are good predictors of sick leave. The latter is particularly relevant in countries where facilities for children and care services are scarce and women are asked to fill the gap. The Italian 2011 pension reform significantly restricted age and seniority requirements for retirement, especially for women in private employment. We investigated whether older Italian employed women reacted to the postponement of retirement by increasing their sick leave. The empirical analysis offers unequivocal evidence that this has indeed been the case, in particular, for low-income grandmothers living in regions with a poor supply of childcare services. Radical reforms risk losing some of their effectiveness if they are not accompanied by parallel measures designed to introduce the welfare provisions previously indirectly and inadequately provided by the pension system, such as care facilities

Intervenants en toxicomanie et prévention de la transmission sexuelle du VIH

L'étude a développé deux axes de recherche: dans le premier, elle a visé à connaître comment les intervenants en toxicomanie appréhendent leurs tâches de prévention de la transmission sexuelle du VIH/sida (PST), quels sont les problèmes qu'ils rencontrent et comment ils pourraient mieux y faire face. Dans le deuxième axe, l'étude avait pour but de mieux connaître les expériences vécues par les consommateurs de drogues dans leur recherche de conseils concernant la prévention de la transmission sexuelle du VIH/sida et leurs besoins à ce sujet. L'attention a aussi été données aux difficultés que rencontrent les consommateurs de drogues à suivre des consignes de prévention dans le domaine de la transmission sexuelle du VIH/sida en tenant compte des différences entre hommes et femmes. [Table des matières] 1. Résumé : synthèse des focus groups, des interviews, conclusions et recommandations. 2. Rappel de la stratégie de prévention et des 3 niveaux d'intervention. 3. Etat de la recherche dans le domaine. 4. Données épidémiologiques VIH/sida. 5. Utilisation du préservatif. 6. Intervenants en toxicomanie, formation , problèmes décrits. 7. Consommateurs de drogues, sexualité, prévention du VIH. 8. Méthodologie. 9. Focus groups avec les intervenants en toxicomanie. 10. Transcription et codification des focus groups. 11. Composition des focus groups et représentativité. 12. Interviews semi-directives des consommateurs de drogues. 13. Construction de la grille d'entretien pour les interviews. 14. Résultats des focus groups. 15. Analyse. 16. Représentations de la prévention de la transmission sexuelle du VIH/sida (PST). 17. Pratiques de PST effectives. 18. Difficultés à faire de la PST. 19. Propositions d'amélioration. 20. Synthèse des propositions des intervenants. 21. Résultats des interviews des consommateurs de drogue. 22. Représentation de la PST. 23. Pertinence des consignes de prévention. 24. Pratiques de prévention vécues. 25. Activité sexuelle. 26. Type de partenaire. 27. Parcours de vie affective et sexuelle. 28. Utilisation du préservatif. 29. Influence de la consommation sur la sexualité. 30. Synthèse sur les pratiques. 31. Difficultés. 32. Conditions de vie. 33. Désespoir et estime de soi. 34. Consommation de cocaïne. 35. Transmission sexuelle du VIH et transmission par voie intraveineuse. 36. Prostitution. 37. Synthèse des difficultés. 38. Synthèse sur les expériences de discussion sur la PST. 39. Synthèse sur les propositions d'amélioration. 40. Synthèse des interviews. 41. Grille d'entretien pour les focus groups, pour les interviews des consommateurs de drogue. 42. Questionnaire court pour les consommateurs de drogue

Polypropylene mesh for hernia repair with controllable cell adhesion/de-adhesion properties

Herein, a versatile bilayersystem, composed by a polypropylene(PP)mesh and a covalently bonded poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) hydrogel, is reported. The cell adhesion mechanism was successfully modulated by controlling the architecture of the hydrogel in terms of duration of PNIPAAm graftingtime, crosslinker content, and temperature of material exposure in PBS solutions (belowandabove the LCST of PNIPAAm). The best in vitroresults with fibroblast (COS-1) and epithelial (MCF-7) cells was obtained with a mesh modified with porous iPP-g-PNIPAAm bilayer system, prepared via PNIPAAm grafting for 2 h at the lowest N,N'-methylene bis(acrylamide) (MBA)concentration (1 mM). Under these conditions, the detachment of the fibroblast-like cells was 50% lower than that of the control, after 7 days of cell incubation, which represents a high de-adhesionof cellsin a short period. Moreover, the whole system showed an excellent stability in dry or wet media, proving that the thermosensitive hydrogel was well adhered to the polymer surface, after PP fibreactivation by cold plasma. This study opens new insights on the development of anti-adherent meshes for abdominal hernia repairs.Peer ReviewedPublished versio