Family trajectories and well-being of children born to lone mothers in the UK

We investigate how lone mothers’ heterogeneity in partnership trajectories is associated with children’s well-being. We use data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows a large sample of children born in the UK in 2000–2002. We divide children who were born to lone mothers into four groups based on their mothers’ partnership trajectories between birth and age seven, which cover more than 80% of these children’s family experiences. We then analyse how these trajectories are associated with markers of health, cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes measured at around age seven. We find that compared to the children that live continuously with lone mothers, children whose biological father stably joined the household have better cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes. In contrast, children in trajectories characterised by living with a stepfather or who experienced biological father joining in the family followed by biological parents’ dissolution had outcomes similar to children living continuously with lone mothers. The results underscore the importance of treating children born to lone mothers as a heterogeneous category

L’agire pedagogico e la “comunicazione formativa” per prevenire il burnout

Il presente contributo ha l’obiettivo di identificare come la comunicazione possa essere indirizzata in un’ottica costruttiva al fine di preservare ed arricchire le relazioni personali e fungere così da fattore protettivo rispetto alle condizioni di burnout. La comunicazione, se opportunamente gestita, ha, infatti, un ruolo essenziale nella prevenzione e nella gestione di situazioni conflittuali all’interno del contesto lavorativo, tanto che si può parlare di comunicazione preventiva. L’arte di essere con l’altro (cioè la capacità di ascoltare, di essere empatici e di dare e ricevere feedback) diviene allora un’arte di cui tutti dovremmo disporre e di cui la formazione deve farsi carico

Does the Prevalence of Obesity Affect the Demand for Soft Drinks? Evidence from Cross-Country Panel Data

The impact of soft drinks on obesity has been widely investigated during the last decades. Conversely, the role of obesity as a factor influencing the demand for soft drinks remains largely unexplored. However, understanding potential changes in the demand for soft drinks, as a result of changes in the spread of obesity, may be useful to better design a comprehensive strategy to curb soft drink consumption. In this paper, we aim to answer the following research question: Does the prevalence of obesity affect the demand for soft drinks? For this purpose, we collected data in a sample of 97 countries worldwide for the period 2005–2019. To deal with problems of reverse causality, an instrumental variable approach and a two-stage least squares method were used to estimate the impact of the age-standardized obesity rate on the market demand for soft drinks. After controlling for several demographic and socio-economic confounding factors, we found that a one percent increase in the prevalence of obesity increases the consumption of soft drinks and carbonated soft drinks by about 2.37 and 1.11 L per person/year, respectively. Our findings corroborate the idea that the development of an obesogenic food environment is a self-sustaining process, in which obesity and unhealthy lifestyles reinforce each other, and further support the need for an integrated approach to curb soft drink consumption by combining sugar taxes with bans, regulations, and nutrition education programs

Testing Club Convergence in Female Smoking Prevalence

In this paper, we applied the concept of convergence to examine the evolution of smoking prevalence among women in 191 countries worldwide from 1990 to 2019. First, the non-linear time-varying factor model proposed by Phillips and Sul was adopted to identify potential clusters (clubs), wherein groups of countries converge to similar female smoking rates. Second, an ordered logit regression model was used to assess the impact of cigarette affordability on the probability of falling within a given cluster. The hypothesis of global convergence was rejected. However, the clustering algorithm successfully identified five and nine clubs, within countries with increasing and decreasing smoking prevalence, respectively. A higher relative income-price ratio (i.e., lower cigarette affordability) increased the likelihood of belonging to a club of countries with a low prevalence of female tobacco smoking

The relationship between family context and job satisfaction: a quantitative investigation

This thesis provides empirical evidence on the relationship between demographic events and job satisfaction. Existing conceptualisations of job satisfaction are not fruitful for theorising the relationship between family context and job satisfaction. I develop a framework whereby job satisfaction is maximised when there are no mismatches between desired and obtained employment characteristics, while desired employment characteristics are in turn affected by family context. On one hand, family events may create negative spill-overs into well-being at work; on the other hand, work may be a buffer against negative family events. As family context I consider motherhood, length of paid leave after birth of a child for women and marital dissolution for men. I use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a longitudinal survey representative of German households that spans the period 1984–2013. This dataset is ideal for my research question because it is the longest panel survey of job satisfaction. Although I chose the SOEP due to its high suitability, I also exploit features of German society and policy. I show that family events bring about variations in job satisfaction in unexpected ways. Becoming a mother does not matter for trajectories of job satisfaction. However, factors such as availability of suitable employment and norms may be more important in explaining why childless women have lower job satisfaction than mothers in Eastern Germany, but not in Western Germany. A shorter paid leave brings about a lower level of job satisfaction at the return to work but only for women of a lower socio-economic standing. Men who divorce experience a temporary increase in job satisfaction that lasts for up to three years after marital dissolution

La rideterminazione unilaterale del contributo statale alla spesa sanitaria al vaglio del Giudice costituzionale: riflessioni in merito al rapporto tra leale collaborazione e normativa sui finanziamenti ai servizi sanitari.

La rideterminazione unilaterale del contributo statale alla spesa sanitaria al vaglio del Giudice costituzionale: riflessioni in merito al rapporto tra leale collaborazione e normativa sui finanziamenti ai servizi sanitari

Non-invasive intestinal biomarkers: a new ELISA test for Pancreatitis Associated Protein detection in pig

Feed additives are commonly used to improve pig performance and health, but they need to be tested so new biomarkers for intestinal health, non- or minimally invasive, are under investigations.The quantification of Myeloperoxidase (MPO) and Pancreatitis Associated Protein (PAP) in feces could prove useful to non-invasively monitor intestinal health (Niewold, 2015). MPO is an enzyme that permits to quantify the number of inflammatory cells present in tissues and feces (Prokopowicz et al., 2012) , while PAP is a protein mainly produced in the small intestine with anti-inflammatory and bactericidal activity (Cash et al., 2006; Mukherjee et al., 2014). Because of the lack of a commercial ELISA kit for porcine PAP detection, the main aim of this study was to develop and validate a new sandwich ELISA test for the quantification of PAP in pig fecal samples. Our study consisted of two phases: test development and test validation. During the development phase we used polyclonal antibodies previously immunized from rabbit serum with a pure peptide containing the N-terminus of pig PAP (Soler et al., 2015). The validation of the test was then performed with fecal extraction samples derived from animals with known high or low growth performance.Moreover, the temperature stability of PAP in feces and the optimal extraction method was tested. Even if only preliminary, our results seem to show a fair relationship between fecal consistency, used as health indicator, and PAP fecal concentrations. Furthermore, no relevant differences in PAP concentration after 24h of incubation at 37 °C, 4°C or room temperature were detected.To date, the present results suggest that PAP seems to be exceptionally stable in feces and is a very promising candidate as a non-invasive (fecal) biomarker for intestinal health and growth

Genetic Variability and Management in Nero di Parma Swine Breed to Preserve Local Diversity

Nero di Parma is an endangered swine breed reared in the North of Italy which nowadays counts 1603 alive pigs. The aims of this study were (i) to explore the genetic diversity of the breed at pedigree level to determine the actual genetic structure, (ii) to evaluate the effectiveness of the breeding recovery project and (iii) to potentially propose breeding strategies for the coming generations. The pedigree dataset contained 14,485 animals and was used to estimate demographic and genetic parameters. The mean equivalent complete generations was equal to 6.47 in the whole population, and it reached a mean value of 7.94 in the live animals, highlighting the quality of the available data. Average inbreeding was 0.28 in the total population, whereas it reached 0.31 in the alive animals and it decreased to 0.27 if only breeding animals were considered. The rate of inbreeding based on the individual increase in inbreeding was equal to 7%. This study showed the effectiveness of the recovery project of the breed. Nevertheless, we found that inbreeding and genetic diversity have reached alarming levels, therefore novel breeding strategies must be applied to ensure long-term survival of this breed

Parametric and nonparametric two-sample tests for feature screening in class comparison: a simulation study

Background. The identification of a location-, scale- and shape-sensitive test to detect differentially expressed features between two comparison groups represents a key point in high dimensional studies. The most commonly used tests refer to differences in location, but general distributional discrepancies might be important to reveal differential biological processes.                                                         Methods. A simulation study was conducted to compare the performance of a set of two-sample tests, i.e. Student's t, Welch's t, Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney, Podgor-Gastwirth PG2, Cucconi, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS), Cramer-von Mises (CvM), Anderson-Darling (AD) and Zhang tests (ZK, ZC and ZA) which were investigated under different distributional patterns. We applied the same tests to a real data example.                   Results. AD, CvM, ZA and ZC tests proved to be the most sensitive tests in mixture distribution patterns, while still maintaining a high power in normal distribution patterns. At best, the AD test showed a loss in power of ~ 2% in the comparison of two normal distributions, but a gain of ~ 32% with mixture distributions respect to the parametric tests. Accordingly, the AD test detected the greatest number of differentially expressed features in the real data application.   Conclusion. The tests for the general two-sample problem introduce a more general concept of 'differential expression', thus overcoming the limitations of the other tests restricted to specific moments of the feature distributions. In particular, the AD test should be considered as a powerful alternative to the parametric tests for feature screening in order to keep as many discriminative features as possible for the class prediction analysis

The relationship between irretroactivity and retroactivity in administrative law

L’elaborato si propone di verificare la sussistenza ed estensione del principio di irretroattività nell’ambito del diritto amministrativo, valevole con riferimento all’efficacia temporale tanto delle norme quanto dei provvedimenti amministrativi. L’esplicita previsione di un principio inderogabile di irretroattività soltanto in ambito penale induce ad interrogarsi sulla vigenza di un analogo divieto di retroattività degli atti anche in relazione ai rapporti pubblicistici, idonei a far sorgere in capo ai soggetti coinvolti interessi qualificati in ordine alla stabilità dei rapporti stessi. L’analisi svolta in relazione agli scarni riferimenti normativi in tema di irretroattività amministrativa ha condotto ad evidenziarne un profondo paradosso di base: la generale e tradizionale qualificazione della irretroattività quale valore fondamentale dello Stato di diritto, essenziale ai fini della piena realizzazione del principio di certezza del diritto, non ha infatti impedito il progressivo avanzamento del fenomeno retroattivo, ossia la proliferazione di fattispecie pubblicistiche i cui effetti retroattivi risultano ordinariamente ammessi da parte dell’ordinamento, in quanto idonei a garantire interessi meritevoli di tutela. L’esame delle principali categorie di retroattività “normativa” e “provvedimentale” ha fatto emergere, in assenza di chiare basi giuridiche sul tema, posizioni dottrinali e giurisprudenziali discordanti in ordine all’individuazione dei limiti opponibili a siffatti interventi manipolativi degli effetti temporali delle fattispecie esaminate. A fronte della vasta molteplicità di istituti tipicamente produttivi di effetti retrospettivi, in astratto idonei a determinare un ribaltamento della tradizionale concezione del rapporto tra irretroattività e retroattività come rapporto di regola ed eccezione, occorre interrogarsi sulla sussistenza di strumenti idonei a garantire la tutela della sfera giuridica degli amministrati, fra i quali è destinato ad assumere una posizione privilegiata il principio di tutela dell’affidamento, in ragione della sua idoneità a fungere non tanto da principio di cui tenere in considerazione ai fini del bilanciamento fra interessi contrapposti, quanto da parametro autonomo di valutazione della legittimità degli atti.The principle of non-retroactivity represents one of the fundamental principles both in the Italian legal system and in the supranational one, which is the reason why legal acts produce their effects in the moment of their perfecting. Usually the phenomenon of retroactivity is an exception, which it realises only if certain requirements are satisfied. However, it is widely believed that the principle in question presents its most critical aspects in the field of administrative law, because it lacks a general provision regarding the principle of non-retroactivity. Moreover, the Italian Constitution protects its citizens against the retroactive effects of legal norms, even though only when it comes to the field of criminal law. This brought many European Member States’ jurisdictions to question the legal nature of the retroactivity phenomenon, in addition to its legal foundations in public law. It is fundamental to reflect on the weight and value of the interests at stake, both public and private, in order to provide national legislators and judges with useful criteria to balance conflicting views on the matter. This issue can be resolved by analysing to what extent the principle of legitimate expectations can be stretched