Does criminal violence spread? Contagion and counter-contagion mechanisms of piracy

Research shows that political and criminal violence cluster spatially but neglects the wide range of mechanisms driving contagion and, more importantly, the role of counter-contagion efforts. After identifying permissive conditions for piracy, I hypothesize that piracy clusters in locations conducive to successful attacks. Pirates engage in risk-reducing behaviour: they return to areas where they have been previously successful but also adapt this learning-based decision to constraints imposed by EU counter-piracy. The analysis relies on uniquely detailed data on piracy and counter-piracy in monthly grid-cells off Somalia (2005-2013). Results show that although successful attacks foster more attacks and contagion, EU counter-piracy reduces contagion. Even within most successful locations, rescue operations reduce incidence of piracy by 89% in the following month. The article contributes to existing contagion/diffusion literature by identifying specific channels of contagion (contiguity and learning) and by factoring in containment policies that can limit and reduce criminal and political violence

Introducing the PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC)

Scholars have used United Nations Secretary General's (UNSG) reports to extract information on peacekeeping operations (PKOs). As key peacekeeping political documents, UNSG reports contain much more information on the politics of peacekeeping. Furthermore, manually extracting information is costly and time-consuming. By providing a machine-readable collection of the UN Secretary General's Reports on PKOs (1994-2020), the PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC) offers highly structured and multiformat text data that connects the peace and conflict research community to recent advancements in text-as-data techniques. Besides paving the way for the first quantitative content analyses on PKOs, PKOC speeds up and expands the range of information analysable from these documents and allows researchers to query them in a quicker, systematic and reproducible way. In this article, we discuss PKOC's core characteristics. As illustration of the innovative potential of PKOC, we show how text-as-data approaches provide more nuanced understanding on PKOs evolution toward multidimensionality, both over time and within missions. While last generation PKOs are assumed to be multidimensional, we show how they vary in multidimensionality and how their complexity also changes throughout their life-cycle

Obstacle to peace? Ethnic geography and effectiveness of peacekeeping

Under what conditions does peacekeeping reduce one-sided violence in civil wars? This article argues that local sources of violence, particularly ethnic geography, affect peacekeeping effectiveness. Existing studies focus on the features of individual missions, yet curbing one-sided violence also depends on peacekeepers’ capacity to reduce the opportunities and incentives for violence. Moving from the idea that territorial control is a function of ethnic polarization, the article posits that peacekeepers are less effective against one-sided violence where power asymmetries are large (low polarization) because they (1) create incentives for escalation against civilians and (2) are less effective at separating/monitoring combatants. The UN mission in Sierra Leone from 1997 to 2001 is examined to show that UN troops reduce one-sided violence, but their effectiveness decreases as power asymmetries grow

Spatial analysis for political scientists

How does space matter in our analysis? Is space just about geography? How can we evaluate diffusion or interdependence between units? How biased can be our analysis if we do not consider spatial clustering? All above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies, passing to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our article introduces political scientists to conceptualizing interdependence between units and how to empirically model these interdependencies using spatial regression. First, the article presents the building blocks of any feature of spatial data (points, polygons, raster) and the task of georeferencing. Second, the article discusses what is an interdependence matrix (W), its importance and variations. Third, the article introduces how to investigate spatial clustering trough visualizations (e.g., maps) but also statistical tests (e.g., Moran’s Index). Finally, the article explains how to analyse data with geographic interdependences, but also non-geographic spatial interdependencies, using spatial error and spatial lags models. We conclude inviting researchers to carefully consider space in their analysis and reflect on the need (and lack of thereof) for spatial models

Do UN peace operations lead to more terrorism? Repertoires of rebel violence and third-party interventions

Recent research suggests that UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) reduce conventional violence. However, rebel groups have been increasingly using a combination of conventional and non-conventional violence, e.g. terrorism. Little is known about whether and under which conditions PKOs shape rebels’ incentives to resort to more terrorism. At the same time, existing research on the use of terrorism in civil wars primarily focuses on domestic factors, thus overlooking the impact of external shocks such as the deployment of PKOs. We argue that PKOs can have critical unintended consequences and induce tactical adaptation in rebel violence as they alter the government-rebels balance of power. Particularly, rebel groups that are militarily strong prior to the UN arrival are incentivised to escalate terrorist violence to overcome the physical barrier imposed by PKO forces and improve their bargaining position vis-à-vis the government. Weaker groups, which in the absence of PKOs are more likely to use terrorism, have not only limited capacity but also fewer incentives to escalate terrorism when PKOs deploy. Leveraging new disaggregated data on rebel terrorist attacks during civil wars, we provide the first global actor-level analysis of the relationship between PKO deployments and changes in rebels’ tactical preferences for terrorist violence. We find that, conditional on government-rebels power relations, PKOs can make terrorism the weapon of the strong. Our study sheds light on the unintended effects of peacekeeping, the causes of terrorism, and offers important policy implications for several current PKOs deployed in the midst of violence

Socio-economic correlates of childhood obesity in urban and rural England

Abstract Objective: Physical access to food may affect diet and thus obesity rates. We build upon existing work to better understand how socio-economic characteristics of locations are associated with childhood overweight. Design: Using cross-sectional design and publicly available data, the study specifically compares rural and urban areas, including interactions of distance from supermarkets with income and population density. Setting: We examine cross-sectional associations with obesity prevalence both in the national scale and across urban and rural areas differing in household wealth. Participants: Children in reception class (aged 4–5) from all state-maintained schools in England taking part in the National Child Measurement Programme (n 6772). Results: Income was the main predictor of childhood obesity (adj. R-sq=.316, p<.001), whereas distance played only a marginal role (adj. R-sq=.01, p<.001). In urban areas, distance and density correlate with obesity directly and conditionally. Urban children were slightly more obese, but the opposite was true for children in affluent areas. Association between income poverty and obesity rates was stronger in urban areas (7·59 %) than rural areas (4·95 %), the former which also showed stronger association between distance and obesity. Conclusions: Obesogenic environments present heightened risks in deprived urban and affluent rural areas. The results have potential value for policy making as for planning and targeting of services for vulnerable groups

Molybdenum oxides coatings for high demanding accelerator components

Large electric gradients are required for a variety of new applications, notably including the extreme high brightness electron sources for X-ray free electron lasers (FELs), radio-frequency (RF) photo-injectors, industrial and medical accelerators, and linear accelerators for particle physics colliders. In the framework of the INFN-LNF, SLAC (USA), KEK (Japan), UCLA (Los Angeles) collaboration, the Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) are involved in the modelling, development, and testing of RF structures devoted to particles acceleration by high gradient electric fields of particles through metal devices. In order to improve the maximum sustainable gradients in normal-conducting RF-accelerating structures, both the RF breakdown and dark current should be minimized. To this purpose, studying new materials as well as manufacturing techniques are mandatory to identify better solutions to such extremely requested applications. In this contribution, we discuss the possibility of using a dedicated coating on a solid copper sample (and other metals) with a relatively thick film to improve and optimize breakdown performances and to minimize the dark current. We present here the first characterization of MoO3 films deposited on copper by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD)

Relazione tecnica sulle attività della campagna oceanografica “Evatir 2016”

La presente relazione tecnica descrive tutte le attività svolte nella Campagna oceanografica “Evatir 2017” condotta a bordo della N/O “G. Dallaporta” (dal 25 luglio al 21 agosto 2016). La Campagna “Evati 2016” è parte integrante del Progetto "Estensione della Campagna acustica Medias (Mediterranean International Acoustic Survey) nelle sub aree geografiche (GSA) 9 (Mar Ligure e Mar Tirreno settentrionale) e 10 (Mar Tirreno centrale e meridionale)", finanziato dal Ministero delle politiche agricole alimentari e forestali (Mipaaf) nell'ambito del Fondo Europeo per gli Affari Marittimi e la Pesca (FEAMP). E’ la sesta campagna rivolta alla valutazione acustica e alla distribuzione spaziale delle popolazioni di piccoli pelagici, insieme allo studio delle condizioni ambientali dell’area di studio. Le specie target del progetto sono state l’acciuga europea (Engraulis encrasicolus) e la sardina (Sardina pilchardus), specie chiave sia a livello commerciale che ecologico. La gestione di tali risorse è abbastanza complessa a causa del loro breve ciclo di vita e dall’ampia oscillazioni inter-annuali nell’abbondanza dello stock, legata al successo o al fallimento del reclutamento annuale. Insieme alle attività di acquisizione acustiche sono stati realizzati campionamenti bilogici, misurazioni, misurazioni di parametri fisico-chimici, rilevamenti di variabili oceanografiche e campionamento di acque (nei Golfi di Salerno, Napoli e Gaeta), monitoraggio della rete da pesca e campionamenti di fitoplancton, zooplancton, solidi sospesi e rilievo delle principali variabili oceanografiche (in prossimità dello stabilimento SOLVAY di Rosignano)

Molecular Signature of Biological Aggressiveness in Clear Cell Sarcoma of the Kidney (CCSK)

: Clear cell sarcoma of the kidney (CCSK) is a rare pediatric renal tumor with a worse prognosis than Wilms' tumor. Although recently, BCOR internal tandem duplication (ITD) has been found as a driver mutation in more than 80% of cases, a deep molecular characterization of this tumor is still lacking, as well as its correlation with the clinical course. The aim of this study was to investigate the differential molecular signature between metastatic and localized BCOR-ITD-positive CCSK at diagnosis. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) and whole-transcriptome sequencing (WTS) were performed on six localized and three metastatic BCOR-ITD-positive CCSKs, confirming that this tumor carries a low mutational burden. No significant recurrences of somatic or germline mutations other than BCOR-ITD were identified among the evaluated samples. Supervised analysis of gene expression data showed enrichment of hundreds of genes, with a significant overrepresentation of the MAPK signaling pathway in metastatic cases (p &lt; 0.0001). Within the molecular signature of metastatic CCSK, five genes were highly and significantly over-expressed: FGF3, VEGFA, SPP1, ADM, and JUND. The role of FGF3 in the acquisition of a more aggressive phenotype was investigated in a cell model system obtained by introducing the ITD into the last exon of BCOR by Crispr/Cas9 gene editing of the HEK-293 cell line. Treatment with FGF3 of BCOR-ITD HEK-293 cell line induced a significant increase in cell migration versus both untreated and scramble cell clone. The identification of over-expressed genes in metastatic CCSKs, with a particular focus on FGF3, could offer new prognostic and therapeutic targets in more aggressive cases

Relazione tecnica sulle attività della Campagna oceanografica “Ancheva 2016”

La presente relazione riporta le attività di ricerca della Campagna oceangrafica “Ancheva 2016”, svolte a bordo della N/O “G. Dallaporta” (nel periodo tra il 4 ed il 26 Luglio 2016) nello Stretto di Sicilia e nel mar Ionio occidentale (GSA 16 e 19) e nelle acque maltesi (GSA 15). Nello specifico, le attività svolte vengono sono di seguito descritte sinteticamente: - Rilevazioni acustiche degli stock di piccoli pelagici con echosounder scientifico Simrad EK60, con trasduttori split beam a scafo; - Campionamenti biologici (di piccoli pelagici) con rete pelagica (volante monobarca), dotata di sistema acustico Simrad ITI per il controllo della geometria della rete (apertura e posizione della rete nella colonna d’acqua); - Campionamenti di tessuti di pesci pelagici (gonadi, fegato e sangue); - Campionamento acqua, in specifiche stazioni, con sonda multiparametrica SEABIRD mod. 9/11 plus (per la misurazione dei parametri fisico-chimici della colonna d’acqua) dotata di bottiglie Niskin (per l’analisi di Nutrienti ed Isotopi di azoto e carbonio); - Campionamento ittioplantonico, mediante con “Bongo 40”, in specifiche stazioni, le cui bocche sono state fissate in alcool, per le analisi degli aminoacidi sulle larve di Engraulis encrasicolus