The Determinant of Money Laundering: Evidence from Italian Regions

Following the INTERPOL’s definition, money laundering is: “any act or attempted act to conceal or disguise the identity of illegally obtained proceeds so that they appear to have originated from legitimate sources”. Illegally obtained funds are laundered and moved around the world using front companies, intermediaries and other money transmitters. In this way, the illegal funds remain hidden and are integrated into the legal economy. Such type of crime undermines financial institutions’ and jurisdictions’ reputation, compromises investors’ trust in them, and therefore weakens the entire financial system. By using annual data for the Italian regions (NUTS-2) over the period 2008 to 2015, this work aims to investigate the determinants of money laundering in Italy. Given the high heterogeneity in terms of economic and institutional characteristics, as well as for the activity of organized crime in financial-related activities, Italy is a compelling case study. Our main findings reveal that in most of the Italian regions enforcement activities do exert significant deterrence on criminal behaviors: a negative relationship between enforcement and illegal trafficking of waste can be identified only for very high levels of enforcement efforts. Moreover, we find that the major determinants influencing the rate of money laundering differ between northern-central and southern regions, confirming the existence of a regional dualism. In particular, while in the northern-central area the crime rate is positively related to the level of corruption, the incidence of mafia-type crimes and negatively to the education attainment, in the southern regions money laundering is positively related to the size of the gaming and gambling sector

The XRF080109-SN2008D and a decade of GRB-Jet-SN connection

Last and nearest GRB-XRF 080109 has been an exceptional lesson on GRB nature. After a decade (since 25 April 08) we know that Supernovae may often contain a Jet. Its persistent activity may shine on axis as a GRBs. Such a persistent, thin beamed gamma jet may be powered by either a BH (Black Holes) or Pulsars. Late stages of these jets may loose the SN traces and appear as a short GRB or a long orphan GRB (depending on jet angular velocity and view angle). XRF are peripherical viewing of the jets. These precessing and spinning gamma jet are originated by Inverse Compton and-or Synchrotron Radiation at pulsars or micro-quasars sources, by ultra-relativistic electrons. These Jets are most powerful at Supernova birth, blazing, once on axis, to us and flashing GRB detector. The trembling of the thin jet explains naturally the observed erratic multi-explosive structure of different GRBs. The jets are precessing (by binary companion or inner disk asymmetry) and decaying by power on time scales of few hours, but they keep staying inside the observer cone view only a few seconds duration times (GRB); the jet is thinner in gamma and wider in X band. This explain the wider and longer X GRB afterglow duration and the rare presence of X-ray precursors.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure

The TNG Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer

NICS (acronym for Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer) is the near-infrared cooled camera-spectrometer that has been developed by the Arcetri Infrared Group at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, in collaboration with the CAISMI-CNR for the TNG (the Italian National Telescope Galileo at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain). As NICS is in its scientific commissioning phase, we report its observing capabilities in the near-infrared bands at the TNG, along with the measured performance and the limiting magnitudes. We also describe some technical details of the project, such as cryogenics, mechanics, and the system which executes data acquisition and control, along with the related software.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, compiled with A&A macros. A&A in pres

On the evolution of flow topology in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Copyright 2016 AIP Publishing. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing.Small-scale dynamics is the spirit of turbulence physics. It implicates many attributes of flow topology evolution, coherent structures, hairpin vorticity dynamics, and mechanism of the kinetic energy cascade. In this work, several dynamical aspects of the small-scale motions have been numerically studied in a framework of Rayleigh-Benard convection (RBC). To do so, direct numerical simulations have been carried out at two Rayleigh numbers Ra = 10(8) and 10(10), inside an air-filled rectangular cell of aspect ratio unity and pi span-wise open-ended distance. As a main feature, the average rate of the invariants of the velocity gradient tensor (Q(G), R-G) has displayed the so-calledPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The active diamond target of the PADME experiment

PADME (Positron Annihilation into Dark Matter Experiment) at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati of the INFN is an experiment that searches for the gauge boson of the dark sector, the dark photon A´, produced in the annihilation between a positron of a beam with an electron of a target. The PADME Lecce group designed and assembled the active diamond target, the heart of the experiment that is working since September 2018 in the beamline in vacuum in stable conditions, without any external interventions