Why High Human Capital Makes Good Revolutionaries: The Role of the Middle Classes in Democratisation

This paper studies how human capital affects agents' tendency to participate in revolutions and consequently political outcomes. We show that since human capital is not expropriatable in the way land or other assets are, revolutions are more attractive if human capital is an important source of income. Specifically, we present a model of involuntary franchise extensions in which we establish a formal link between the increasing importance of human capital as a source of income for mainly the middle classes in 19th century Europe and franchise extensions. Intuitively, agents become less change averse when their income cannot be expropriated and thus larger and larger concessions from the elite are necessary to avoid any upheaval. We show that the higher human capital is in a country, the more the elite use 'populist' policies aimed at garnering the support of the poor and the larger are the franchise extensions which the elite use to counter a revolutionary threat. While we derive the mechanism linki ng human capital and democratisation by looking at 19th century Europe it might play an important role more generally, notably in the wave of democratisations in Latin America in the 1980s and in the current Arab uprisings

Pediatric glaucoma: current perspectives

Giorgio Marchini, Marco Toscani, Francesca Chemello Eye Clinic, Department of Neurological and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy Abstract: "Childhood glaucoma" is a heterogeneous group of severe pediatric conditions often associated with significant visual loss and characterized by elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) and optic-disk cupping. Successful IOP control is crucial but challenging and most often achieved surgically, with medical therapy playing a supportive role. There are many classifications of childhood glaucoma, but they can simply be divided into primary, in which a developmental abnormality of the anterior chamber angle only exists, and secondary, in which aqueous outflow is reduced due to independent mechanisms that secondarily impair the function of the filtration angle. The worldwide prevalence of childhood blindness ranges from 0.03% in high-income countries to 0.12% in undeveloped countries. The majority of cases do not have an identified genetic mutation and, where the mutation is known, the genes often account for only a small proportion of cases. Several pathogenetic mechanisms are known to contribute to the development of childhood glaucoma. Whatever the cause, it results in a reduced aqueous outflow at the level of the trabecular meshwork. Age of onset and magnitude of the elevated IOP largely determine the clinical manifestation the high variability of clinical manifestations. Glaucoma from any cause in a neonate and infant is characterized by the classic triad of epiphora, photophobia, and blepharospasm, and could be associated with eye enlargement (buphthalmos) and Haab striae. The eye examination, usually performed under general anesthesia, includes: tonometry, anterior-segment examination, gonioscopy, corneal diameter and axial length measurement, dilated fundoscopy with optic-nerve-head evaluation. Medical therapy, considering the high frequency of side effects, is generally used as temporizing IOP-lowering treatment before surgery or as adjuvant treatment postoperatively in case of partially successful procedures for refractory glaucomas. Surgery is the nodal point of the management of refractory childhood glaucoma, so it is crucial to opt for a forward-looking strategy to reach the target IOP and minimize the visual loss. Keywords: childhood glaucoma, congenital glaucoma, glaucoma surgical therapy, childhood visual los

Winning the Oil Lottery: The Impact of Natural Resource Extraction on Growth

This paper provides evidence on the causal impact of oil discoveries on local development. Novel data on the drilling of 20,000 oil wells in Brazil allows us to exploit a quasi-experiment: municipalities where oil was discovered constitute the treatment group while municipalities with drilling but no discovery are the control group. The results show that oil discoveries significantly increase per capita GDP and urbanization. We find positive spillovers to non-oil sectors, specifically an increase in services GDP which stems from higher labor productivity. The results are consistent with greater local demand for non-tradable services driven by highly paid oil workers

Slip-rates of blind thrusts in slow deforming areas: examples from the Po Plain (Italy)

We calculate Plio-Pleistocene slip rates on the blind thrusts of the outer Northern Apennines fronts, that are the potential sources of highly damaging earthquakes, as shown by the MW 6.1-6.0, 2012 Emilia-Romagna seismic sequence. Slip rates are a key parameter for understanding the seismogenic potential of active fault systems and assessing the seismic hazard they pose, however, they are difficult to calculate in slow deforming areas like the Po Plain where faulting and folding is mostly blind. To overcome this, we developed a workflow which included the preparation of a homogeneous regional dataset of geological and geophysical subsurface information, rich in Plio- Pleistocene data. We then constructed 3D geological models around selected individual structures to decompact the clastic units and restore the slip on the fault planes. The back-stripping of the differential compaction eliminates unwanted overestimation of the slip rates due to compactioninduced differential subsidence. Finally, to restore the displacement we used different methods according to the deformation style, i.e. Fault Parallel Flow for faulted horizons, trishear and elastic dislocation modeling for fault-propagation folds. The result of our study is the compilation of a slip rate database integrating former published values with 28 new values covering a time interval from the Pliocene to the present. It contains data on 14 individual blind thrusts including the Mirandola thrust, seismogenic source of the 29 May 2012, MW 6.0 earthquake. Our study highlights that the investigated thrusts were active with rates ranging between 0.1-1.0 mm/yr during the last 1.81 Myr. The Mirandola thrust slipped at 0.86±0.38 mm/yr during the last 0.4 Myr. These rates calculated with an homogeneous methodology through the entire Po Plain can be charged entirely to the thrust activity and not to secondary effects like the differential compaction of sediments across the structures

Deriving thrust fault slip rates from geological modeling: examples from the Marche coastal and offshore contraction belt, Northern Apennines, Italy.

We present a reconstruction of the central Marche thrust system in the central-northern Adriatic domain aimed at constraining the geometry of the active faults deemed to be potential sources of moderate to large earthquakes in this region and at evaluating their long-term slip rates. This system of contractional structures is associated with fault-propagation folds outcropping along the coast or buried in the offshore that have been active at least since about 3Myr. The ongoing deformation of the coastal and offshore Marche thrust system is associated with moderate historical and instrumental seismicity and recorded in sedimentary and geomorphic features. In this study, we use subsurface data coming from both published and original sources. These comprise cross-sections, seismic lines, subsurface maps and borehole data to constrain geometrically coherent local 3D geological models, with particular focus on the Pliocene and Pleistocene units. Two sections crossing five main faults and correlative anticlines are extracted to calculate slip rates on the driving thrust faults. Our slip rate calculation procedure includes a) the assessment of the onset time which is based on the sedimentary and structural architecture, b) the decompaction of clastic units where necessary, and c) the restoration of the slip on the fault planes. The assessment of the differential compaction history of clastic rocks eliminates the effects of compaction-induced subsidence which determine unwanted overestimation of slip rates. To restore the displacement along the analyzed structures, we use two different methods on the basis of the deformation style: the fault parallel flow algorithm for faulted horizons and the trishear algorithm for fault-propagation folds. The time of fault onset ranges between 5.3-2.2 Myr; overall the average slip rates of the various thrusts are in the range of 0.26-1.35 mm/yr

Foveal to peripheral extrapolation of facial emotion.

Peripheral vision is characterized by poor resolution. Recent evidence from brightness perception suggests that missing information is filled out with information at fixation. Here we show a novel filling-out mechanism: when participants are presented with a crowd of faces, the perceived emotion of faces in peripheral vision is biased towards the emotion of the face at fixation. This mechanism is particularly important in social situations where people often need to perceive the overall mood of a crowd. Some faces in the crowd are more likely to catch people's attention and be looked at directly, while others are only seen peripherally. Our findings suggest that the perceived emotion of these peripheral faces, and the overall perceived mood of the crowd, is biased by the emotions of the faces that people look at directly

On a kinetic model for a simple market economy

In this paper, we consider a simple kinetic model of economy involving both exchanges between agents and speculative trading. We show that the kinetic model admits non trivial quasi-stationary states with power law tails of Pareto type. In order to do this we consider a suitable asymptotic limit of the model yielding a Fokker-Planck equation for the distribution of wealth among individuals. For this equation the stationary state can be easily derived and shows a Pareto power law tail. Numerical results confirm the previous analysis

Winning the oil lottery: the impact of natural resource extraction on growth

This paper provides evidence of the causal impact of oil discoveries on local development. Novel data covering the universe of oil wells drilled in Brazil allow us to exploit a quasi-experiment: Municipalities where oil was discovered consti- tute the treatment group, while municipalities with drilling but no discovery are the control group. The results show that oil discoveries significantly increase local production and have positive spillovers. Workers relocate from informal, low pro- ductivity agriculture to higher value-added activities in formal services, increasing urbanization. The results are consistent with greater local demand for non-tradable services driven by highly paid oil workers