Positive Copyright and Open Content Licences: How to Make a Marriage Work by Empowering Authors to Disseminate Their Creations

Positive copyright appears to have been progressively turned away from its normative function of ensuring a fair and efficient transmission of human knowledge. The private sector is seeking to counterbalance this phenomenon by adopting legal tools that expand the public domain of knowledge, such as web-based licences modelled on the "open access" approach. The increasing world-wide preference for Creative Commons licences confirms their aptness to transform copyright law into a tool flexible enough to serve authors' several purposes. Such a spontaneous counterbalance experiences many difficulties though, because of the structure that positive copyright has adopted over the last few years. The current situation is an excellent point from which to look back at how authors used to disseminate their works before the advent of the Internet. From a historical view-point copyright has always accomplished the twin functions of economically rewarding authors and enabling communication of their creations to the public. The latter goal is achieved by means of statutory mechanisms limiting the freedom of contract between authors and their counterparts (intermediaries in a broad sense), in order to enforce the authors' capacity to spread their works. In the current digital environment, however, these mechanisms are not likely to accomplish their original functions. This paper seeks to explore an adjustment that will permit authors to take advantage of all the new means of commercial exploitation and non-commercial dissemination of their works offered by the Internet. Such an adjustment aims also at realigning positive and normative copyright by encompassing the use of open content licensing within the current copyright framework

Liability and Emerging Digital Technologies: An EU Perspective

Il contributo affronta il tema della responsabilità per danni causati nel corso dell'uso di una nuova technologia digitale quali l'IA, o l'IoTs

Development of a 3" LaBr3 SiPM-Based Detection Module for High Resolution Gamma Ray Spectroscopy and Imaging

AbstractGamma radiation detection finds many applications in different fields, including astrophysics, nuclear physics and medical diagnostics. Nowadays large Lanthanum Bromide crystals coupled to Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs) represent the state of the art for gamma detection modules, in particular for spectroscopic measurements. Nevertheless, there is an interest in substituting photomultiplier tubes with solid state photodetectors like Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs), owing to the latter's significant advantages. These include insensitivity to magnetic fields, low bias voltage, compactness, fast response and mechanical robustness. The aim of this thesis work, which was carried out within the context of the GAMMA project supported by IstitutoNazionale di FisicaNucleare (INFN), is the design, development and experimental characterization of a -ray spectrometer based on large Lanthanum Bromide scintillator crystals coupled with Silicon Photomultipliers. This detector specifications are compliant with nuclear physics experiments with energies ranging from 100 keV to 20 MeV, characterized by state-of-the-art energy resolution and imaging capability, in a compact, modular and robust structure. In order to perform the readout of large scintillator crystals, a matrix of 144 Silicon Photomultipliers was designed using NUV-HD SiPMs from Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK). These were chosen due to their high Photon Detection Efficiency in correspondence with the peak emission wavelength of the crystal, the high cell density and low Dark Count Rate

An experiential program on the foundations of quantum mechanics for final-year high-school students

Teaching and learning quantum mechanics is one of the most demanding educational and conceptual challenges, in particular in secondary schools where students do not possess an adequate mathematical background to effectively support the description of quantum behaviour. Educational research shows that traditional approaches, generally based on historical and narrative perspectives, are only partially effective. The reason is that they do not address in depth those basic quantum concepts that radically question the fundamentals of classical physics. A research-based educational program has been proposed to two final-year classes of an Italian scientific high school. In order to build the main concepts of quantum mechanics and their formal basic representation via real and simulated experiments, the program uses the light polarization as a context. A quantum game was then integrated in the educational program, to support students’ learning. Their conceptual paths, monitored by means of tutorials and questionnaires, show significant student learning especially on the concept of state and on appropriating the formalism meaning, whereas students more frequently referred to the geometrical vector representation instead of the algebraic-analytic formula. The quantum game has emerged to support intuition and operative experience in distinguishing the foundational concepts of superposition and entanglement

In vitro cultured progenitors and precursors of cardiac cell lineages from human normal and post-ischemic hearts.

The demonstration of the presence of dividing primitive cells in damaged hearts has sparked increased interest about myocardium regenerative processes. We examined the rate and the differentiation of in vitro cultured resident cardiac primitive cells obtained from pathological and normal human hearts in order to evaluate the activation of progenitors and precursors of cardiac cell lineages in post-ischemic human hearts. The precursors and progenitors of cardiomyocyte, smooth muscle and endothelial lineage were identified by immunocytochemistry and the expression of characteristic markers was studied by western blot and RT-PCR.The amount of proteins characteristic for cardiac cells (alpha-SA and MHC, VEGFR-2 and FVIII, SMA for the precursors of cardiomyocytes, endothelial and smooth muscle cells, respectively) inclines toward an increase in both alpha-SA and MHC. The increased levels of FVIII and VEGFR2 are statistically significant, suggesting an important re-activation of neoangiogenesis. At the same time, the augmented expression of mRNA for Nkx 2.5, the trascriptional factor for cardiomyocyte differentiation, confirms the persistence of differentiative processes in terminally injured hearts. Our study would appear to confirm the activation of human heart regeneration potential in pathological conditions and the ability of its primitive cells to maintain their proliferative capability in vitro. The cardiac cell isolation method we used could be useful in the future for studying modifications to the microenvironment that positively influence cardiac primitive cell differentiation or inhibit, or retard, the pathological remodeling and functional degradation of the heart

Track running shoes: a case report of the transition from classical spikes to "super spikes" in track running

Research on high-tech running shoes is increasing but few studies are available about the use of high-tech track spike shoes (super spikes), despite their growing popularity among running athletes. The aim of this case study was to investigate kinematics, kinetics, and plantar pressures of an Olympic running athlete using two different types of shoes, to provide an easy and replicable method to assess their influence on running biomechanics. The tested athlete performed six running trials, at the same speed, wearing a pair of normal spikes shoes (NSS) and a super spikes shoe (SSS), in random order. SSS increased contact time, vertical impact, and swing force (Effect Size 3.70, 7.86, and 1.31, respectively), while it reduced foot-strike type and vertical ground reaction force rate (Effect Size 3.62 and 7.21, respectively). Moreover, a significant change was observed in medial and lateral load, with SSS inducing a more symmetrical load distribution between the left and right feet compared to the NSS (SSS left medial load 57.1 +/- 2.1%, left lateral load 42.9 +/- 1.4%, right medial load 55.1 +/- 2.6%, right lateral load 44.9 +/- 2.6%; NSS left medial load 58.4 +/- 2.6%, left lateral load 41.6 +/- 2.1%, right medial load 49.2 +/- 3.7%, right lateral load 50.8 +/- 3.7%). The results of this case study suggest the importance of using individual evaluation methods to assess shoe adaptations in running athletes, which can induce biomechanical modifications and should be considered by coaches to ensure optimal running performance

Adverse reactions to oncologic drugs: spontaneous reporting and signal detection

Oncology is one of the areas of medicine with the most active research being conducted on new drugs. New pharmacological entities frequently enter the clinical arena, and therefore, the safety profile of anticancer products deserves continuous monitoring. However, only very severe and (unusual) suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are usually reported, since cancer patients develop ADRs very frequently and some practical selectivity must be used. Notably, a recent study was able to identify 76 serious ADRs reported in updated drug labels of oncologic drugs and 50% of them (n = 38) were potentially fatal. Of these, 49 and 58%, respectively, were not described in initial drug labels. The aims of this article are to provide an overview about spontaneous reporting of ADRs of oncologic drugs and to discuss the available methods to analyze the safety of anticancer drugs using databases of spontaneous ADR reporting

Antibiotic prescriptions in Italian hospitalised children after serial point prevalence surveys (or pointless prevalence surveys): has anything actually changed over the years?

BACKGROUND: Point prevalence surveys have been used in several studies to provide immediate and easily comparable information about antibiotic use and showed that about one third of hospitalised children had on ongoing antimicrobial prescription during their hospital admission. The aim of this study, as part of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance, Prescribing and Efficacy in Neonates and Children project, is to describe antimicrobial prescriptions among hospitalised children in four tertiary care hospitals in Italy to show if something has changed over the years. METHODS: Four tertiary care Italian's hospitals joined three Point Prevalence Surveys (PPSs) in three different period of the year. All children under 18 years of age with an ongoing antimicrobial prescription, admitted on the participating wards at 8 o'clock in the morning of the selecting day were enrolled. RESULTS: A total of 1412 patients (475 neonates and 937 children) were admitted in the days of three PPSs. Overall, among the total admitted patients, 565 patients (40%) had an ongoing antimicrobial prescription in the days of the survey A total of 718 antibiotics were administered in the 485 admitted children and 133 in neonates. The most common indications for antibiotic therapy in children was Lower respiratory tract infections (244/718, 34%), while in neonates were prophylaxis for medical problems (35/133, 26.3%), newborn prophylaxis for newborn risk factors (29/133, 21.8%) and prophylaxis for surgical disease (15/133, 11.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Based on our results, it appears that nothing has changed since the last PPS and that the quality improved targets, underlyined in previous studies, are always the same. Serial PPSs can be part of AMS strategies but they are not sufficient alone to produce changes in clinical practice