Water Scarcity and Virtual Water Trade in the Mediterranean

Virtual water trade refers to the implicit content of water in the production of goods and services. When trade is undertaken, there is an implicit exchange of water. Furthermore, when water gets scarce, water intensive goods become more expensive to produce and the economy compensates through higher water imports.This paper is about applying the concept of virtual water to the problem of future water scarcity in the Mediterranean area, also induced by the climate change. The aim is assessing to what extent water trade is a viable adaptation option to the problem of water scarcity. To this end, a computable general equilibrium model is extended with satellite data on sectoral water consumption, and used to assess future scenarios of water availability.It is found that virtual trade may curb the negative effect of water scarcity, yet the consequences in terms of income and welfare remain quite significant, especially for some regions.Computable General Equilibrium Models, Water, Virtual Water, Water Scarcity, Climate Change

Increasing the lensing figure of merit through higher order convergence moments

The unprecedented quality, the increased data set, and the wide area of ongoing and near future weak lensing surveys allows one to move beyond the standard two points statistics, thus making it worthwhile to investigate higher order probes. As an interesting step toward this direction, we explore the use of higher order moments (HOM) of the convergence field as a way to increase the lensing figure of merit (FoM). To this end, we rely on simulated convergence to first show that HOM can be measured and calibrated so that it is indeed possible to predict them for a given cosmological model provided suitable nuisance parameters are introduced and then marginalized over. We then forecast the accuracy on cosmological parameters from the use of HOM alone and in combination with standard shear power spectra tomography. It turns out that HOM allow one to break some common degeneracies, thus significantly boosting the overall FoM. We also qualitatively discuss possible systematics and how they can be dealt with

A Riemann-Hilbert formulation for the finite temperature Hubbard model

Inspired by recent results in the context of AdS/CFT integrability, we reconsider the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz equations describing the 1D fermionic Hubbard model at finite temperature. We prove that the infinite set of TBA equations are equivalent to a simple nonlinear Riemann-Hilbert problem for a finite number of unknown functions. The latter can be transformed into a set of three coupled nonlinear integral equations defined over a finite support, which can be easily solved numerically. We discuss the emergence of an exact Bethe Ansatz and the link between the TBA approach and the results by J\"uttner, Kl\"umper and Suzuki based on the Quantum Transfer Matrix method. We also comment on the analytic continuation mechanism leading to excited states and on the mirror equations describing the finite-size Hubbard model with twisted boundary conditions.Comment: 43 pages, 13 figures. v2: References added, typos corrected, minor changes to the text. v3: JHEP published version; typos corrected, references added and text improved in Section

Minkowski Functionals of Convergence Maps and the Lensing Figure of Merit

Minkowski functionals (MFs) quantify the topological properties of a given field probing its departure from Gaussianity. We investigate their use on lensing convergence maps in order to see whether they can provide further insights on the underlying cosmology with respect to the standard second-order statistics, i.e., cosmic shear tomography. To this end, we first present a method to match theoretical predictions with measured MFs taking care of the shape noise, imperfections in the map reconstruction, and inaccurate description of the nonlinearities in the matter power spectrum and bispectrum. We validate this method against simulated maps reconstructed from shear fields generated by the MICE simulation. We then perform a Fisher matrix analysis to forecast the accuracy on cosmological parameters from a joint MFs and shear tomography analysis. It turns out that MFs are indeed helpful to break the $\Omega_{\rm m}$--$\sigma_8$ degeneracy thus generating a sort of chain reaction leading to an overall increase of the Figure of Merit.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Matches published version in PR

Comparing disease control policies for interacting wild populations

We consider interacting population systems of predator-prey type, presenting four models of control strategies for epidemics among the prey. In particular to contain the transmissible disease, safety niches are considered, assuming they lessen the disease spread, but do not protect prey from predators. This represents a novelty with respect to standard ecosystems where the refuge prevents predators' attacks. The niche is assumed either to protect the healthy individuals, or to hinder the infected ones to get in contact with the susceptibles, or finally to reduce altogether contacts that might lead to new cases of the infection. In addition a standard culling procedure is also analysed. The effectiveness of the different strategies are compared. Probably the environments providing a place where disease carriers cannot come in contact with the healthy individuals, or where their contact rates are lowered, seem to preferable for disease containment

ESO VLT Optical Spectroscopy of BL Lac Objects IV. New spectra and properties of the full sample

We present the last chapter of a spectroscopy program aimed at deriving the redshift or a lower limit to the redshift of BL Lac objects using medium resolution spectroscopy. Here we report new spectra for 33 BL Lac object candidates obtained in 2008-2009 confirming the BL Lac nature of 25 sources and for 5 objects we obtained new redshifts. These new observations are combined with our previous data in order to construct a homogeneous sample of \sim 70 BL Lacs with high quality spectroscopy. All these spectra can be accessed at the website http://www.oapd.inaf.it/zbllac/. The average spectrum, beaming properties of the full sample, discussion on intervening systems and future perspectives are addressed.Comment: 25 pages, 13 Figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

Ruptured middle cerebral artery aneurysms. retrospective study and multivariate analysis of 105 patients treated by surgical clipping

Objective of the study: We analyze in this study only patients with surgically treated ruptured aneurysms in order to identify statistical significance of each predictive factor in terms of outcome of patients with ruptured MCAAs. Materials and methods: In this retrospective study, we analyzed 105 cases of ruptured MCAAs, admitted from January 2001 to December 2015 at Neurosurgical Department of Umberto I University Hospital of Rome, Italy. Predictive factors evaluated are: Patient’s features (age, sex, co-morbidities), aneurysmal location (proximal, bifurcation or distal) and size of aneurysmal dome (small, large or giant); surgical timing (ultra-early, early, delayed), and Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ICH) volume. For each parameter we calculated mean and standard deviation, covariance and relation coefficient (through the linear regression model). Results: The clinical evaluation of patients assessed through the World Federation of Neurological Surgeons (WFSN) grading scale, that is 5 for 37 patients (35.3%), 4 for 28 patients. In 40% of cases the maximum sac diameter was between 7 mm and 12 mm, while in 67% of the cases the aneurysms concerned the bifurcation of the middle cerebral artery. ICH was associated in 57 cases (54.3%). As far as outcome is concerned, at 3 months, 32 patients (30.47%) had a favourable outcome, while 73 (69.52%) patients had not favourable outcome. To one year, 46 patients (43.8%) had favourable outcomes, while 59 patients (56.19%) had not favourable outcome. The mean outcomes as mean mRS are significantly less favourable in patients with ICH. Conclusion: In MCAAs patients, the presence of ICH strongly affects the outcome with a marked increase in mortality and morbidity. Surgical timing significantly influences the outcomes and ultra-early surgery should always be taken into account

Simulating populations of protocells with uneven division

Protocells should be similar to present-day biological cells, but much simpler. They are believed to have played a key role in the origin of life, and they may also be the basis of a new technology with tremendous opportunities. In this work we study the effect of uneven division processes on the synchronization of the duplication rates of protocells’ membrane and internal materials