Contested Spaces of Citizenship: Camps, Borders and Urban Encounters

As citizenship regulations have tightened across the world, protest and activist movements have also emerged to challenge the violence of border and migration control. Positioned at the intersection of citizenship studies and critical geography, this special issue explores how space is conceived, mobilised, used and, in turn, shaped by these political struggles. The authors argue that citizenship is inextricably and irreducibly spatial, and therefore entangled with the material and discursive dimensions of geographical places and scales. Drawing on a rich set of examples, the contributions of this issue trace how space is actively and strategically used within multiple processes of political subjectivation. Focusing on critical sites through which exclusionary logics materialise – such as camps, borders and the urban space, the papers investigate how marginal(ised) political subjects claim their rights in and through space in different and often ambiguous ways, including contestation and solidarity

Leave-one-out prediction error of systolic arterial pressure time series under paced breathing

In this paper we show that different physiological states and pathological conditions may be characterized in terms of predictability of time series signals from the underlying biological system. In particular we consider systolic arterial pressure time series from healthy subjects and Chronic Heart Failure patients, undergoing paced respiration. We model time series by the regularized least squares approach and quantify predictability by the leave-one-out error. We find that the entrainment mechanism connected to paced breath, that renders the arterial blood pressure signal more regular, thus more predictable, is less effective in patients, and this effect correlates with the seriousness of the heart failure. The leave-one-out error separates controls from patients and, when all orders of nonlinearity are taken into account, alive patients from patients for which cardiac death occurred

Today is already Yesterday:\ua0The\ua0Glossa XX1 architectural project for the Italian Memorial in Block 21 at Auschwitz

The architect of the proposed Glossa XX Architectural Project for the Italian Memorial in Block " at Auschwitz, presents and elucidates the restorations it involves and its response to criticisms made by the Direction of the Auschwitz Museum

Arena parlamentare e regolazione politica in Italia : Il caso della politica pensionistica - L'impatto dei conflitti redistributivi sul processo di produzione legislativa (1948-1983)

Defence date: 26 June 1987Examining board: Prof. Jean Blondel ; Prof. Maurizio Cotta ; Prof. Gosta Esping-Andersen ; Prof. Peter Flora ; Prof. Massimo PaciFirst made available online: 14 September 201

One step minilaparotomy-assisted transmesenteric portal vein recanalization combined with transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement: A novel surgical proposal in pediatrics

Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) placement is a standard procedure for the treatment of portal hypertension complications. When this conventional approach is not feasible, alternative procedures for systemic diversion of portal blood have been proposed. A one-step interventional approach, combining minilaparotomy-assisted transmesenteric (MAT) antegrade portal recanalization and TIPS, is described in an adolescent with recurrent esophageal varice bleeding and portal cavernoma (PC). A 16-year-old girl was admitted to our Unit because of repeated bleeding episodes over a short period of time due to esophageal varices in the context of a PC. A portal vein recanalization through an ileocolic vein isolation with the MAT approach followed by TIPS during the same session was performed. In the case of failed portal recanalization, this approach, would also be useful for varice endovascular embolization. Postoperative recovery was uneventful. Treatment consisting of propanolol, enoxaparin and a proton pump inhibitor was prescribed after the procedure. One month post-op, contrast enhanced computed tomography confirmed the patency of the portal and intrahepatic stent grafts. No residual peritoneal fluid was detected nor opacification of the large varices. Endoscopy showed good improvement of the varices. Doppler ultrasound confirmed the accelerated flow in the portal stent and hepatopetal flow inside the intrahepatic portal branches. Three months post-op, TIPS maintained its hourglass shape despite a slight expansion. Portal hypertension and life threatening conditions related to PC would benefit from one-step portal recanalization. MAT-TIPS is feasible and safe for the treatment of PC even in children. This minimally invasive procedure avoids or delays surgical treatment or re-transplantation when necessary in pediatric patients

Brexit: Modes of Uncertainty and Futures in an Impasse

Alongside the emergence of various populisms, Brexit and other contemporary geopolitical events have been presented as symptomatic of a generalizing and intensifying sense of uncertainty in the midst of a crisis of (neo)liberalism. In this paper we describe what kind of event Brexit is becoming in the impasse between the UK’s EU referendum in 2016 and its anticipated exit from the EU in 2019. Based on 108 interviews with people in the North‐East of England, we trace how Brexit is variously enacted and felt as an end, advent, a harbinger of worse to come, non‐event, disaster, and betrayed promise. By following how these incommensurate versions of Brexit take form and co‐exist we supplement explanatory and predictive approaches to the geographies of Brexit and exemplify an approach that traces what such geopolitical events become. Specifically, we use the concept of ‘modes of uncertainty’ as a way of discerning patterns in how present uncertainties are lived. A ‘mode of uncertainty’ is a shared set of practices animated by a distinctive mood through which futures are made present and felt. Rather than treat uncertainty as a static, explanatory context, we thus follow how different versions of Brexit are constituted through specific ‘modes of (un)certainty’ – negative hope, national optimisms, apprehensive hopefulness and fantasies of action ‐ that differentiate within a seemingly singular, shared sense of uncertainty

Batchsize and topological criteria: a combined approach to safely optimize hazardous polymerization processes

Small and medium chemical enterprises are widely diffused in Italy. Particularly, they operate batch and semi-batch processes working on job orders and making a massive use of multipurpose reactors having an Emergency Relief System (ERS) already installed. A batchsize approach is a method focused on finding the reactor fill level that can lead to a single phase vapor flow whether an external fire occurs, so that the installed ERS can protect the reactor from overpressures. In this work, such an approach has been revised, by choosing a runaway reaction as design incidental scenario, and integrated with a suitable optimization procedure based on topological criteria. The new batchsize approach allows for computing a reactor fill level which is much more reasonable for industrial applications with respect to that one predicted by the older method, while the topological approach permits to identify the minimum dosing time capable of guaranteeing both reactor safety and high productivity. Theoretical results have been experimentally validated using data obtained by reaction calorimetry experiments, carried out in an isoperibolic RC1 equipment (1 L, Mettler Toledo), implementing the relevant case study of the solution homopolymerization of butyl acrylate

UV Raman lidar measurements of relative humidity for the characterization of cirrus cloud microphysical properties

Abstract. Raman lidar measurements performed in Potenza by the Raman lidar system BASIL in the presence of cirrus clouds are discussed. Measurements were performed on 6 September 2004 in the frame of the Italian phase of the EAQUATE Experiment. The major feature of BASIL is represented by its capability to perform high-resolution and accurate measurements of atmospheric temperature and water vapour, and consequently relative humidity, both in daytime and night-time, based on the application of the rotational and vibrational Raman lidar techniques in the UV. BASIL is also capable to provide measurements of the particle backscatter and extinction coefficient, and consequently lidar ratio (at the time of these measurements, only at one wavelength), which are fundamental to infer geometrical and microphysical properties of clouds. A case study is discussed in order to assess the capability of Raman lidars to measure humidity in presence of cirrus clouds, both below and inside the cloud. While air inside the cloud layers is observed to be always under-saturated with respect to water, both ice super-saturation and under-saturation conditions are found inside these clouds. Upper tropospheric moistening is observed below the lower cloud layer. The synergic use of the data derived from the ground based Raman Lidar and of spectral radiances measured by the NAST-I Airborne Spectrometer allows the determination of the temporal evolution of the atmospheric cooling/heating rates due to the presence of the cirrus cloud. Lidar measurements beneath the cirrus cloud layer have been interpreted using a 1-D cirrus cloud model with explicit microphysics. The 1-D simulations indicate that sedimentation-moistening has contributed significantly to the moist anomaly, but other mechanisms are also contributing. This result supports the hypothesis that the observed mid-tropospheric humidification is a real feature which is strongly influenced by the sublimation of precipitating ice crystals. Results illustrated in this study demonstrate that Raman lidars, like the one used in this study, can resolve the spatial and temporal scales required for the study of cirrus cloud microphysical processes and appear sensitive enough to reveal and quantify upper tropospheric humidification associated with cirrus cloud sublimation

Phase shifts of synchronized oscillators and the systolic/diastolic blood pressure relation

We study the phase-synchronization properties of systolic and diastolic arterial pressure in healthy subjects. We find that delays in the oscillatory components of the time series depend on the frequency bands that are considered, in particular we find a change of sign in the phase shift going from the Very Low Frequency band to the High Frequency band. This behavior should reflect a collective behavior of a system of nonlinear interacting elementary oscillators. We prove that some models describing such systems, e.g. the Winfree and the Kuramoto models offer a clue to this phenomenon. For these theoretical models there is a linear relationship between phase shifts and the difference of natural frequencies of oscillators and a change of sign in the phase shift naturally emerges.Comment: 8 figures, 9 page