Perceptions and imaginaries about the fourth industrial revolution between geographies of opportunity and discontent: Some reflections on the Italian case

The pervasiveness of advanced technologies and their disruptive impact on society have spurred the debate on the emergence of a new industrial revolution and on its positive and negative effects, both at an individual and spatial level. This paper aims to contribute to this debate, focusing attention on the perception of changes related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and exploring new methods of analysis of the manifestations of both techno-enthusiasm and opposition to it. Starting from the extensive literature in this field, the work adopts two research perspectives: the study of imaginaries and narratives developed around the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which convey different messages from social groups and places; the geographies of opportunity and discontent, which address the resentment expressed by some localities towards advanced technological models and growing inequalities. In this work the Fourth Industrial Revolution is not interpreted through data about the technological variables or interviews to protagonists of the phenomenon; rather, emphasis is on the points of view of non-institutional subjects and, in particular, the opinions expressed by people on the Web. For this reason, the sentiment analysis has been adopted to identify both positive and negative polarities and the relevance of specific feelings through the selection of key words related to the notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The empirical analysis based on this methodology focuses on the Italian case in a specific period (first and second phase of the pandemic, from January 2020 to September 2021) and, at a local level, on the comparison between four medium-sized cities (Pisa, Lecce, Taranto and Terni). This paper also tries to extend recent contributions through the provision of new perspectives for the definition of policies designed with the involvement of the population and places regarding both the processes of technological change and the definition of new socio-spatial models

CPT and Quantum Mechanics Tests with Kaons: Theory

In this talk I review theoretical motivations for possible CPT Violation and deviations from ordinary quantum mechanical behavior of field theoretic systems in some quantum gravity models, and I describe the relevant precision tests using neutral and charged Kaons. I emphasize the possibly unique role of neutral-meson factories in providing specific tests of models in which the CPT operator is not well-defined, leading to modifications of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) particle correlators.Comment: Invited talk at BEACH2006 Conference (Lancaster Univ., UK, July 2-8 2006), 4 pages LaTeX, 2 eps figures incorporate

La nuova rivoluzione industriale tra tecno-entusiasmo e tecnologia: un'analisi spaziale del sentiment

Immaginari socio-tecnologici e analisi spaziale delle percezioni. – L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di affrontare l’impatto della diffusione delle tecnologie avanzate non tanto dal punto di vista quan-titativo e della rappresentazione della distribuzione spaziale del fenomeno, quanto sul piano delle percezioni e delle rappresentazioni che emergono dall’ascolto delle voci provenienti dal Web e dai social media. Sembra infatti sempre più urgente contribuire al dibattito sulle recenti rivoluzioni industriali e digitali, esplorando nuove metodologie di analisi del fenomeno e dando spazio a diversi punti di vista e alle opinioni dei soggetti non istituzionali e non protagonisti rispetto alle narrazioni più ricorrenti e pervasive elaborate intorno al pro-gresso tecnologico. A tale proposito, esiste un’ampia letteratura che interpreta i cambiamenti generati dalla quarta rivoluzione industriale facendo riferimento alla produzione di tecnologie sempre più avanzate e alla loro forza dirompente in termini di impatto socioeconomico e di contributo ai diversi campi della vita umana e più recentemente anche ai processi di transizione ecologica (Schwab, 2016). Inoltre, come rilevano diversi studi nel campo della geografia economica e dell’economia regionale (De Propris e Bailey, 2020; Capello e Lenzi, 2022), la diffusione delle tecnologie 4.0 sta producendo trasformazioni non solo sulla vita delle per-sone e sulle comunità locali, ma anche sui sistemi urbani e regionali e sui livelli di sviluppo dei contesti a diverse scale territoriali

Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate metabolites in urine show age-related changes and associations with adiposity and parameters of insulin sensitivity in childhood

Objectives: Phthalates might be implicated with obesity and insulin sensitivity. We evaluated the levels of primary and secondary metabolites of Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) in urine in obese and normal-weight subjects both before and during puberty, and investigated their relationships with auxological parameters and indexes of insulin sensitivity. Design and Methods: DEHP metabolites (MEHP, 6-OH-MEHP, 5-oxo-MEHP, 5-OH-MEHP, and 5-CX-MEHP), were measured in urine by RP-HPLC-ESI-MS. Traditional statistical analysis and a data mining analysis using the Auto-CM analysis were able to offer an insight into the complex biological connections between the studied variables. Results: The data showed changes in DEHP metabolites in urine related with obesity, puberty, and presence of insulin resistance. Changes in urine metabolites were related with age, height and weight, waist circumference and waist to height ratio, thus to fat distribution. In addition, clear relationships in both obese and normal-weight subjects were detected among MEHP, its products of oxidation and measurements of insulin sensitivity. Conclusion: It remains to be elucidated whether exposure to phthalates per se is actually the risk factor or if the ability of the body to metabolize phthalates is actually the key point. Further studies that span from conception to elderly subjects besides further understanding of DEHP metabolism are warranted to clarify these aspects

Assessment of resistance mechanisms and clinical implications in patients with kras mutated-metastatic breast cancer and resistance to cdk4/6 inhibitors

Simple SummaryPalbociclib in combination with fulvestrant is used globally to treat metastatic breast cancer, but it was recognized that not all patients benefit from this combination of drugs. However, the predictive factors remain unknown. Here, we show KRAS ctDNA levels as predictive mechanisms of resistance to palbociclib and fulvestrant, and their association with the time to treatment discontinuation of the above treatment. These observations shed light on the potential clinical applications of ctDNA analysis in this setting of patients, in order to provide critical information about tumour dynamics, and to predict who will take advantage from CDK4/6 inhibitors.Despite therapeutic improvements, resistance to palbociclib is a growing clinical challenge which is poorly understood. This study was conducted in order to understand the molecular mechanisms of resistance to palbociclib, and to identify biomarkers to predict who will take advantage from cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i). A total of about a thousand blood samples were collected from 106 patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+) human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) negative metastatic breast cancer who received palbociclib in combination with fulvestrant as the first-line metastatic therapy enrolled in this study. The genotyping of their plasma cell-free DNA was studied, including serial plasma samples. Collectively, our findings identify the appearance of KRAS mutations leading to palbociclib resistance acquisition within 6 months, and provide critical information for the prediction of therapeutic responses in metastatic breast cancer. By monitoring KRAS status through liquid biopsy, we could predict who will take advantage from the combination of palbociclib and fulvestrant, offering highly-individualized treatment plans, thus ensuring the best patient quality of life

The Iterative Signature Algorithm for the analysis of large scale gene expression data

We present a new approach for the analysis of genome-wide expression data. Our method is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional techniques, when applied to large-scale data. Rather than alloting each gene to a single cluster, we assign both genes and conditions to context-dependent and potentially overlapping transcription modules. We provide a rigorous definition of a transcription module as the object to be retrieved from the expression data. An efficient algorithm, that searches for the modules encoded in the data by iteratively refining sets of genes and conditions until they match this definition, is established. Each iteration involves a linear map, induced by the normalized expression matrix, followed by the application of a threshold function. We argue that our method is in fact a generalization of Singular Value Decomposition, which corresponds to the special case where no threshold is applied. We show analytically that for noisy expression data our approach leads to better classification due to the implementation of the threshold. This result is confirmed by numerical analyses based on in-silico expression data. We discuss briefly results obtained by applying our algorithm to expression data from the yeast S. cerevisiae.Comment: Latex, 36 pages, 8 figure

Oltre la Globalizzazione. Conflitti/Conflicts

Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati alla giornata di studio dal titolo «Oltre la globalizzazione: le proposte della Geografia economica», promossa da alcuni anni dalla Società di Studi Geografici Negli anni si è partiti dal tema della «globalizzazione» per poi esplorare altri temi centrali per gli studi geografici, dalla «prossimità» alla «resilienza», sempre declinati negli ambiti delle imprese, dei mercati, dei sistemi territoriali, delle reti urbane e dell’ambiente. Nel 2014 la Giornata di studi SSG ha proposto come riferimento il tema del conflitto, invitando i ricercatori a confrontarsi sia dal punto di vista metodologico che nella scelta del linguaggio di rappresentazione dei fenomeni