Cosmic voids in coupled dark energy cosmologies: the impact of halo bias

In this work we analyse the properties of cosmic voids in standard and coupled dark energy cosmologies. Using large numerical simulations, we investigate the effects produced by the dark energy coupling on three statistics: the filling factor, the size distribution and the stacked profiles of cosmic voids. We find that the bias of the tracers of the density field used to identify the voids strongly influences the properties of the void catalogues, and, consequently, the possibility of using the identified voids as a probe to distinguish coupled dark energy models from the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. In fact, on one hand coupled dark energy models are characterised by an excess of large voids in the cold dark matter distribution as compared to the reference standard cosmology, due to their higher normalisation of linear perturbations at low redshifts. Specifically, these models present an excess of large voids with $R_{eff}>20, 15, 12$ Mpc h^{-1}, at $z=0, 0.55, 1$, respectively. On the other hand, we do not find any significant difference in the properties of the void detected in the distribution of collapsed dark matter halos. These results imply that the tracer bias has a significant impact on the possibility of using cosmic void catalogues to probe cosmology.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures and 2 tables. Submitted to MNRA

The evolution of income inequality and relative poverty in Italy: 1987-2010

In this paper we study the evolution of poverty and inequality in Italy in the period 1987-2010. Our data are from the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth and the variable of interest is real income (reference year is 2009), defined using price indexes that are allowed to vary by region and that allow us to make comparisons in levels of real incomes. We construct relative poverty and inequality indexes using equivalent income obtained by applying two types of equivalence scales widely used in the literature (square root of the number of household members and ISEE scale) in order to verify how our measures of poverty and inequality are sensitive to the adoption of the equivalence scale. While we do not intend to be innovative in the measurement of poverty or inequality (we rely on widely used indexes), our aim is to depict a complete picture of the evolution of poverty and inequality with a particular attention to their determinants. By using decomposable inequality and poverty indexes we look at five decompositions: by gender, geographical areas (North West, North East, Centre and South), class age (less than 30, between 30 and 40, 40 and 50, 50 and 60 and over 60), education (compulsory school or less, upper secondary and tertiary education) and employment condition (employee, self-employed and unemployed). Given the definition of non- overlapping groups we examine-as far as inequality is concerned- the relative weights of the “within” and of the “between” components while, for poverty, we look at “poverty risks”. These analyses allow us to understand weather inequality originates mostly from differences within each group or from differences across groups and how each group influences overall poverty (measured using both the headcount ration and the average squared normalised poverty gaps that embeds the poverty gap and its distribution among the poor). Finally we consider some counterfactual exercises as to find out the effect of the changes during the analysed period of the demographic composition of the groups, of the subgroups’ mean incomes (only for inequality) and of the subgroups’ specific inequality or poverty indexes. The results show that the main determinants of the inequality and poverty evolution in Italy can be traced to geographical and educational grouping, with the age grouping relevant for poverty only.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

INNOREG: A Comprehensive Dataset on Government Policies Affecting Innovation

The purpose of this report is to describe the methodology used to develop a comprehensive dataset, denominated INNOREG, which provides information on several potential drivers and barriers to firms’ innovation activity. All the examined drivers and barriers depend, in a more or less direct way, upon the decisions taken by national policy makers. By merging INNOREG with data on ICT use, innovation, productivity and employment it will be possible to investigate the effect of several policies (mainly concerning labour market and taxation) and of the efficiency of bureaucracy on measures of economic performance such as production, employment, innovation etc.. The data are of three main types: 1. reforms of labour market regulation, computed using the EU Commission LABREF database, and which gives us information on the direction and intensity of reforms affecting the labour markets of 27 EU countries from 2000 to 2012 (LABREF_DRF.DTA); 2. generosity of the tax treatment for R&D, as measured by the B-Index over the period 1990-2013 (not all years are available) for a set of EU countries (B_INDEX.DTA); 3. indices of business regulation, as measured by various indicators taken by the Wordbank DoingBusiness project, reported annually from 2004 to 2014 for all EU countries (DOINGBUSINESS.DTA). For each of the above three topics, we developed a specific dataset (name in parenthesis). The three resulting datasets were then merged to form the comprehensive INNOREG dataset (INNOREG.dta). In this report we also provide summary statistics on the three types of data mentioned above.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

On the impact of body material properties on neuroevolution for embodied agents

Artificial agents required to perform non-trivial tasks are commonly controlled with Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), which need to be carefully fine-tuned. This is where ANN optimization comes into play, often in the form of Neuroevolution (NE). Among artificial agents, the embodied ones, are characterized by a strong body-brain entanglement, i.e., a strong interdependence between the physical properties of the body and the controller. In this work, we aim at characterizing said interconnection, experimentally evaluating the impact body material properties have on NE for embodied agents. We consider the case of Voxel-based Soft Robots (VSRs), a class of simulated modular soft robots which achieve movement through the rhythmical contraction and expansion of their modules. We experiment varying several physical properties of VSRs and assess the effectiveness of the evolved controllers for the task of locomotion, together with their robustness and adaptability. Our results confirm the existence of a deep body-brain interrelationship for embodied agents, and highlight how NE fruitfully exploits the physical properties of the agents to give rise to a wide gamut of effective and adaptable behaviors

NCOA4 impairs systemic iron homeostasis

NCOA4 protein is involved in iron metabolism. Indeed, under low iron conditions, NCOA4 accumulates and promotes, as cargo receptor, the autophagic degradation of the iron-storage macromolecule ferritin. This process, called ferritinophagy, is critical to restore the appropriate cellular iron levels and could impair systemic iron homeostasis. Consistently, we have demonstrated that mice carrying genetic ablation of NCOA4 were unable to mobilize iron from deposits, featuring tissue iron overload as well as mild anemia. Because of impaired ferritinophagy, NCOA4 null mice displayed a severe mycrocitic hypocromic anemia and ineffective erythropoiesis when fed with an iron low diet. Conversely, they poorly tolerated an iron rich diet, dying prematurely for iron toxicity. Since in previous studies we discovered that nuclear NCOA4 is a chromatin binding protein that acts as a negative regulator of DNA replication origin activation, inhibiting the MCM2-7 DNA helicase, we also investigated whether NCOA4 could regulate DNA replication as a function of iron bioavailability. Treatment with iron chelators promoted a G1-arrest, blocking DNA replication origins activation. In cell fractionation experiments, we observed that iron depletion induced nuclear translocation of NCOA4, and by ChIP and co-immunoprecipitation assays we demonstrated that NCOA4 increased its binding to DNA replication origins and to MCM2-7 complex, respectively. Silencing of NCOA4 induced an unscheduled activation of DNA replication under iron-depleted conditions that promotes replication stress and reduction of cell viability. In conclusion, our data indicate NCOA4 as a novel inter player coupling DNA replication origin activation to cellular iron levels

Cosmic voids detection without density measurements

Cosmic voids are effective cosmological probes to discriminate among competing world models. Their identification is generally based on density or geometry criteria that, because of their very nature, are prone to shot noise. We propose two void finders that are based on dynamical criterion to select voids in Lagrangian coordinates and minimise the impact of sparse sampling. The first approach exploits the Zel'dovich approximation to trace back in time the orbits of galaxies located in voids and their surroundings, the second uses the observed galaxy-galaxy correlation function to relax the objects' spatial distribution to homogeneity and isotropy. In both cases voids are defined as regions of the negative velocity divergence, that can be regarded as sinks of the back-in-time streamlines of the mass tracers. To assess the performance of our methods we used a dark matter halo mock catalogue CoDECS, and compared the results with those obtained with the ZOBOV void finder. We find that the void divergence profiles are less scattered than the density ones and, therefore, their stacking constitutes a more accurate cosmological probe. The significance of the divergence signal in the central part of voids obtained from both our finders is 60% higher than for overdensity profiles in the ZOBOV case. The ellipticity of the stacked void measured in the divergence field is closer to unity, as expected, than what is found when using halo positions. Therefore our void finders are complementary to the existing methods, that should contribute to improve the accuracy of void-based cosmological tests.Comment: 12 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

On the Mutual Influence of Human and Artificial Life: an Experimental Investigation

Our modern world is teeming with non-biological agents, whose growing complexity brings them so close to living beings that they can be cataloged as artificial creatures, i.e., a form of Artificial Life (ALife). Ranging from disembodied intelligent agents to robots of conspicuous dimensions, all these artifacts are united by the fact that they are designed, built, and possibly trained by humans taking inspiration from natural elements. Hence, humans play a fundamental role in relation to ALife, both as creators and as final users, which calls attention to the need of studying the mutual influence of human and artificial life. Here we attempt an experimental investigation of the reciprocal effects of the human-ALife interaction. To this extent, we design an artificial world populated by life-like creatures, and resort to open-ended evolution to foster the creatures adaptation. We allow bidirectional communication between the system and humans, who can observe the artificial world and voluntarily choose to perform positive or negative actions towards the creatures populating it; those actions may have a short- or long-term impact on the artificial creatures. Our experimental results show that the creatures are capable of evolving under the influence of humans, even though the impact of the interaction remains uncertain. In addition, we find that ALife gives rise to disparate feelings in humans who interact with it, who are not always aware of the importance of their conduct

Clinical Features of Pediatric Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension and Applicability of New ICHD-3 Criteria

Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is characterized by intracranial pressure >28 cmH2O in the absence of identifiable causes. Aim of this paper is to describe the clinical phenotype of pediatric IIH and to analyze the applicability of ICHD-3 criteria in comparison to the ICHD-2. We conducted a retrospective analysis of full clinical data of pediatric patients diagnosed with IIH between January 2007 and June 2018. Diagnostic evaluation included neuroimaging (all patients) and ultrasound-based optic nerve sheath diameter measurement (9 patients). Diagnosis of IIH was verified according to both ICHD-2 and ICHD-3 criteria for headache attributed to IIH, to verify the degree of concordance. We identified 41 subjects with suspected IIH; 14 were excluded due a diagnosis of secondary IH or lack of data. We therefore selected 27 subjects (age 4-15 years, mean 11). All patients presented with headache and bilateral papilloedema. Headache was daily in 22% cases, with diffuse gravative pain in 41%. In 4%, pain was exacerbated by cough, stress or tension. The most common presentation symptoms, in addition to headache, were blurred vision or diplopia (70%), vomiting (33%), and dizziness (15%). Twenty patients (74%) were obese. In 6 patients (22%) neuroimaging showed empty sella. Optic nerve sheath distension was detected in 6 out of 9 patients. Regarding the applicability of the ICHD-2 criteria, 18/27 (71%) patients have criterion A; 24/27 (89%) criterion B; 27/27 (100%) criterion C; 27/27 (100%) criterion D. When the ICHD-3 criteria were used, 27/27 (100%) fitted criterion A; 24/27 (89%) criterion B; 27/27 (100%) criterion C; and 27/27 (100%) criterion D. Our study suggests that, as compared with the ICHD-2, the new ICHD-3 criteria for headache attributed to IIH are better satisfied by pediatric patients with IIH. This is mainly due to the fact that qualitative headache characteristics are no longer considered in ICHD-3. Although the risk of under-rating the symptom of headache in IIH should not be disregarded, in pediatric population headache characteristics are usually less defined than in adults and obtaining a precise description of them is often very difficult

PALAVRAS DO EDITOR

Esse primeiro fascículo de 2016 de Estudos Kantianos, periódico que pelo quarto ano consecutivo compõe o cenário de revistas brasileiras consagradas ao pensamento de Kant, exibe um rico dossiê “Kant e Fichte” preparado por Giorgia Cecchinato e Federico Ferraguto – cuja introdução apresenta cada um dos seis estudos que o compõem –, além de quatro outros artigos respectivamente dedicados à rejeição de Kant ao uso de explicações fisiológicas no âmbito de sua antropologia, aos opúsculos kantianos sobre o terremoto de Lisboa e o sublime dinâmico da terceira Crítica, às particularidades da leitura rawlsiana de Kant e à interpretação de Giuseppe Zamboni do filósofo de Königsberg