Critical storm thresholds for significant morphological changes and damage along the Emilia-Romagna coastline, Italy

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EDM constraints on flavored CP-violating phases

The CP-violating phenomenology of the MSSM with Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV) in the lepton sector is revisited. To this end, the most general parametrizations of the slepton soft-breaking terms are constructed assuming a seesaw mechanism of type I. After a critical reassessment of how the CP-symmetry is broken within the MFV framework, all possible CP-violating phases are introduced. From the strong hierarchy of their contributions to the Electric Dipole Moments (EDMs), these phases are split into three classes: flavor-blind, flavor-diagonal and flavor off-diagonal. In particular, the phases from the neutrino sector belong to the last class; they start to contribute only at the second order in the mass-insertion approximation and have thus a negligible effect. It is then shown that to each class of phases corresponds a unique largely dominant term in the MFV expansion. Numerically, for a realistic range of MSSM and neutrino parameters, such that B(mu --> e gamma) does not exceed its experimental bound, the three types of phases are found to be allowed by the current bound on the electron EDM, though the next generation of experiments should constrain tightly the flavor-blind phase. Finally, we relax the MFV hypothesis and show how in the general MSSM, the MFV operator basis can be used to judge of the naturality of the slepton soft-breaking terms.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes; one reference added. To appear in Nucl. Phys.

From Flavour to SUSY Flavour Models

If supersymmetry (SUSY) will be discovered, successful models of flavour not only have to provide an explanation of the flavour structure of the Standard Model fermions, but also of the flavour structure of their scalar superpartners. We discuss aspects of such "SUSY flavour" models, towards predicting both flavour structures, in the context of supergravity (SUGRA). We point out the importance of carefully taking into account SUSY-specific effects, such as 1-loop SUSY threshold corrections and canonical normalization, when fitting the model to the data for fermion masses and mixings. This entangles the flavour model with the SUSY parameters and leads to interesting predictions for the sparticle spectrum. We demonstrate these effects by analyzing an example class of flavour models in the framework of an SU(5) Grand Unified Theory with a family symmetry with real triplet representations. For flavour violation through the SUSY soft breaking terms, the class of models realizes a scheme we refer to as "Trilinear Dominance", where flavour violation effects are dominantly induced by the trilinear terms.Comment: 44 pages, 10 figures, version published in Nuclear Physics

Bridging flavour violation and leptogenesis in SU(3) family models

We reconsider basic, in the sense of minimal field content, Pati-Salam x SU(3) family models which make use of the Type I see-saw mechanism to reproduce the observed mixing and mass spectrum in the neutrino sector. The goal of this is to achieve the observed baryon asymmetry through the thermal decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino and at the same time to be consistent with the expected experimental lepton flavour violation sensitivity. This kind of models have been previously considered but it was not possible to achieve a compatibility among all of the ingredients mentioned above. We describe then how different SU(3) messengers, the heavy fields that decouple and produce the right form of the Yukawa couplings together with the scalars breaking the SU(3) symmetry, can lead to different Yukawa couplings. This in turn implies different consequences for flavour violation couplings and conditions for realizing the right amount of baryon asymmetry through the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino. Also a highlight of the present work is a new fit of the Yukawa textures traditionally embedded in SU(3) family models.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, Some typos correcte

"Delirium Day": A nationwide point prevalence study of delirium in older hospitalized patients using an easy standardized diagnostic tool

Background: To date, delirium prevalence in adult acute hospital populations has been estimated generally from pooled findings of single-center studies and/or among specific patient populations. Furthermore, the number of participants in these studies has not exceeded a few hundred. To overcome these limitations, we have determined, in a multicenter study, the prevalence of delirium over a single day among a large population of patients admitted to acute and rehabilitation hospital wards in Italy. Methods: This is a point prevalence study (called "Delirium Day") including 1867 older patients (aged 65 years or more) across 108 acute and 12 rehabilitation wards in Italian hospitals. Delirium was assessed on the same day in all patients using the 4AT, a validated and briefly administered tool which does not require training. We also collected data regarding motoric subtypes of delirium, functional and nutritional status, dementia, comorbidity, medications, feeding tubes, peripheral venous and urinary catheters, and physical restraints. Results: The mean sample age was 82.0 \ub1 7.5 years (58 % female). Overall, 429 patients (22.9 %) had delirium. Hypoactive was the commonest subtype (132/344 patients, 38.5 %), followed by mixed, hyperactive, and nonmotoric delirium. The prevalence was highest in Neurology (28.5 %) and Geriatrics (24.7 %), lowest in Rehabilitation (14.0 %), and intermediate in Orthopedic (20.6 %) and Internal Medicine wards (21.4 %). In a multivariable logistic regression, age (odds ratio [OR] 1.03, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.01-1.05), Activities of Daily Living dependence (OR 1.19, 95 % CI 1.12-1.27), dementia (OR 3.25, 95 % CI 2.41-4.38), malnutrition (OR 2.01, 95 % CI 1.29-3.14), and use of antipsychotics (OR 2.03, 95 % CI 1.45-2.82), feeding tubes (OR 2.51, 95 % CI 1.11-5.66), peripheral venous catheters (OR 1.41, 95 % CI 1.06-1.87), urinary catheters (OR 1.73, 95 % CI 1.30-2.29), and physical restraints (OR 1.84, 95 % CI 1.40-2.40) were associated with delirium. Admission to Neurology wards was also associated with delirium (OR 2.00, 95 % CI 1.29-3.14), while admission to other settings was not. Conclusions: Delirium occurred in more than one out of five patients in acute and rehabilitation hospital wards. Prevalence was highest in Neurology and lowest in Rehabilitation divisions. The "Delirium Day" project might become a useful method to assess delirium across hospital settings and a benchmarking platform for future surveys

Smart water and soil-salinity management in agro-wetlands

Soil salinization is becoming worldwide one of the most serious land degradation issues. Seawater intrusion in upper aquifers is responsible for the largest proportion of salt-affected agricultural lands in coastal areas. In this study, the impact of different irrigation strategies on the salinity of a maize cultivated field located in the coastal plain of Ravenna, Italy, was simulated with the FAO AquaCrop model. Model calibration was supported by comparison with remote-sensed and field collected crop data. Ten irrigation scenarios were tested by varying the irrigation season length, the soil moisture threshold for irrigation (TI), and the irrigation depth (ID), in presence or absence of flooded pipe drains (FD) to create a fresh-water lens preventing salt rising from brackish groundwater. FD show to be more effective in countering soil salinization than strategies exclusively based on supplying enough water to obtain salt leaching (SL). The best result, in terms of both fodder maize yield and salinization control, is achieved with the combination: FD immediately after sowing, irrigation inhibited in May, TI set at 50% of soil readily available water (RAW), and ID modulated to exceed field capacity and obtain SL. The worse strategy is revealed to be the non-FD scenario, coupled with no irrigation in May and August, TI ranging between 65 and 80% of soil RAW depletion, and ID set at 50 mm. Even if water-conservative, this approach results in high soil salinization and leads to significant yield decrease

I nuovi studi su marreggiate e fenomeni erosivi

Negli ultimi anni è cresciuta l'attenzione per il monitoraggio dei fenomeni a forte impatto sul sistema costiero. Il progetto europeo Micore prevede lo sviluppo di un sistema previsionale per la comprensione e previsione dei fenomeni erosivi sulla costa anche in Emilia-Romagna. I risultati per l'inverno 2009-2010 hanno evidenziato il contributo delle acque alte per i fenomeni erosivi e hanno confermato la necessità di un sistema di previsione attivo e di continuare le pratiche di protezione in atto