Think Piece. The World without Deposit and without Precaution From Rachel Carson to the 4th WEEC: A journey of learning in a changing world

My environmental commitment started long ago. Those were the years of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, when the concern of more sensitive people focused (not necessarily in order of importance) on water pollution caused by detergents, on the carcinogenic effects of pesticides in agriculture and artificial colourings and preservatives in foods, on nuclear danger, on hunger in what was then called the Third World, where decolonisation was in progress. Television brought into homes black and white images of tanks in the streets or crowds in revolt; of great personalities sending out messages of peace and justice and feeding the hopes of democracy. Today the images of the first come in colour, but those of the second are in short supply. They were the years of great change in countries that are now part of the G7 or the OECD.1 Cement and asphalt were on the rise, supermarkets were opening and small shops closing, loose foods (sold by weight and wrapped up on the spot) were disappearing from the shelves and ready-made foods were taking their place. For one Italian writer (Pierpaolo Pasolini, murdered in 1975), those were the years of the ‘disappearance of the fireflies’ – that charming insect that no longer lights up the hot summer nights because of the pollution and the urban sprawl. To paraphrase Rachel Carson, we had entered the era of the ‘dark summer’. For me, a young boy at the time, it was also the era of the ‘no deposit/no return’ disposable bottles of beer or milk, etc. For the wealthy world this was the sign of achieved affluence. Millions of people were breathing a sigh of relief. After two world wars, after the difficult 1950s (which millions of immigrants had spent in mine shafts or on assembly lines), it was the sign of liberation from sacrifice and woes. Instead, it was the sign of the next collapse

Point Defects in Two-Dimensional Indium Selenide as Tunable Single-Photon Sources

In the past few years remarkable interest has been kindled by the development of nonclassical light sources and, in particular, of single-photon emitters (SPE), which represent fundamental building blocks for optical quantum technology. In this Letter, we analyze the stability and electronic properties of an InSe monolayer with point defects with the aim of demonstrating its applicability as an SPE. The presence of deep defect states within the InSe band gap is verified when considering substitutional defects with atoms belonging to group IV, V, and VI. In particular, the optical properties of Ge as substitution impurity of Se predicted by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation on top of the GW corrected electronic states show that transitions between the valence band maximum and the defect state are responsible for the absorption and spontaneous emission processes, so that the latter results in a strongly peaked spectrum in the near-infrared. These properties, together with a high localization of the involved electronic states, appear encouraging in the quest for novel SPE materials

Saving with a social impact: Evidence from trento province

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of investing, focusing on its potential social impact. In particular, we consider whether there is room for expanding impact investing through social savings. The increasing trend in the demand for social finance makes the topic of unique interest, particularly when data on preferences for social saving can be collected at the individual level. We investigate the determinants and drivers of saving with a social goal running a survey conducted in Trentino-Alto Adige in which respondents are asked to allocate their portfolio to possible social investments. In line with the evidence collected in the Netherlands by Riedl and Smeets (2014), our results show a strong preference for a lower return, with the condition that the return is invested in a community programme, and little interest in the monetary return of the investment. Respondents are either inclined to put their entire portfolio into saving for the community or not to invest at all. This result suggests that there is a consistent demand, only partially accommodated by the supply, for financial products investing in the community, rather than for a monetary return

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker: years ahead of her time.

Women phsycians in the United States were virtually nonexistent in the early to mid-1800s. Traditional medical schools still did not accept women, and few secretarian or eclectic medical schools were beginning to open their doors to female students. In 1849 at Geneva College, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States.1 At the time of the Civil War, the few women who had managed to obtain medical degrees mainly served as nurses in the war, because society was not yet ready to accept the female physician.2 Dr. Mary Edwards Walker would help change the role of women physicians, becoming not only a valuable surgeon for the Union Army, but also a catalyst for the introduction and advancement of women in medicine