Convergence among Italian Regions, 1861-2011

In 150 years, the trends in regional disparities in economic development within Italy have differed depending on whether they are gauged by longitude or by latitude. The disparities between western and eastern regions first widened and then closed; the North-South gap, by contrast, remains the main open problem in the national history of Italy. This work focuses on the underlying causes of the turning points in regional disparities since national unification in 1861. The first came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with the industrialization of the so-called "industrial triangle". This was followed by the "failed new turn" during the interwar years: not only were the beginnings of convergence blocked but the North-South gap, until then still natural, inevitable, was transformed into a fracture of exceptional dimensions. The second turning point, in the twenty years after the World War, produced the first substantial, lasting convergence between southern and northern Italy, powered by rising productivity and structural change in the South. The last turning point was in the mid-1970s, when convergence was abruptly halted and a protracted period of immobility in the disparity began.Italy, regional disparities

Local field enhancement: comparing self-similar and dimer nanoantennas

We study the local field enhancement properties of self-similar nanolenses and compare the obtained results with the performance of standard dimer nanoantennas. We report that, despite the additional structural complexity, self-similar nanolenses are unable to provide significant improvements over the field enhancement performance of standard plasmonic dimers

Chiral Surface Waves for Enhanced Circular Dichroism

We present a novel chiral sensing platform that combines a one-dimensional photonic crystal design with a birefringent surface defect. The platform sustains simultaneous transverse electric and transverse magnetic surface modes, which are exploited to generate chiral surface waves. The present design provides homogeneous and superchiral fields of both handednesses over arbitrarily large areas in a wide spectral range, resulting in the enhancement of the circular dichroism signal by two orders of magnitude, thus paving the road toward the successful combination of surface-enhanced spectroscopies and electromagnetic superchirality.Comment: Added references. Corrected typos. Included new design for broadband chiral surface wave

Phase-Retrieval with Incomplete Autocorrelations Using Deep Convolutional Autoencoders

Phase-retrieval techniques aim to recover the original signal from just the modulus of its Fourier transform, which is usually much easier to measure than its phase, but the standard iterative techniques tend to fail if only part of the modulus information is available. We show that a neural network can be trained to perform phase retrieval using only incomplete information, and we discuss advantages and limitations of this approach

Benchmarking the Use of Heavily-Doped Ge Against Noble Metals for Plasmonics and Sensing in the Mid-Infrared

Despite the recent introduction of heavily-doped semiconductors for mid-infrared plasmonics, it still remains an open point whether such materials can compete with noble metals. We employ a whole set of figures of merit to thoroughly assess the use of heavily-doped Ge on Si as a mid-infrared plasmonic material and benchmark it against standard noble metals such as Au. In doing this, we design and model high-performance, CMOS compatible mid-infrared plasmonic sensors based on experimental material data reaching plasma frequencies up to about 1950 cm−1. We demonstrate that plasmonic Ge sensors can provide signal enhancements for vibrational spectroscopy above 3 orders of magnitude, thus representing a viable alternative to noble metals

Faster deterministic wakeup in multiple access

We consider the fundamental problem of waking up n processors sharing a multiple access channel. We assume the weakest model of synchronization, the locally synchronous model, in which no global clock is available: processors have local clocks ticking at the same rate, but each clock starts counting the rounds in the round in which the correspondent processor wakes up. Moreover, the number n of processors is not known to the processors. We propose a new deterministic algorithm for this problem in time O(n^3 log^3 n), which improves on the currently best upper bound of O(n^4 log^5 n)

An investigation into the contribution of flavin containing monooxygenases to the development and prevention of thiourea-induced pulmonary toxicity in the rat

NR678, a small thiourea-based rodenticide candidate, is lethal to rats when administered orally at relatively small doses (5 and 10 mg/kg) and causes rapid life-threatening respiratory impairment, characterised by severe hydrothorax and pulmonary oedema. However, rats are protected from a normally lethal dose of NR678, after prior exposure to a low dose (0.5 mg/kg). Similar to other molecules containing the thiourea moiety, NR678 is mainly metabolised by flavin containing monooxygenases (FMOs), a class of enzymes involved in the detoxification, or more rarely, bioactivation of N- or S-containing molecules during phase I metabolism. Rat FMO2, the main FMO expressed in the lungs, like the correspondent human isoform, exhibits a genetic polymorphism which may influence the responses of this organ to NR678 and other drugs metabolised by FMOs. The aims of this thesis were to assess the morphological and functional aspects of NR678-induced acute lung injury (ALI) and to investigate the role of the adaptive pulmonary defence response involved in the prevention of the oxidative injury. In addition, the wild rat, which, in contrast to the laboratory rat, possesses a functional pulmonary FMO2, was explored as a possible animal model to evaluate the metabolic and toxicologic consequences of FMO2 polymorphism in humans. It was shown that pulmonary endothelial cells are the main target of acute NR678 oxidative injury and exhibit ultrastructural alterations, which, coupled with a marked depletion of glutathione (GSH) levels, are likely responsible for the perturbation of pulmonary vascular permeability. The lungs of tolerant animals showed mild and transient changes of the vascular permeability and mildly increased cellularity in the lungs, which was characterised by increased numbers of alveolar macrophages and immature pneumocytes within 24 h after dosing, followed by a rise in the number of mature type II pneumocytes one week later. The microscopic changes resolved by the end of the second week, when rats were found to be again susceptible to a lethal dose of NR678. It was speculated that the adaptive response of the lungs to NR678 could be related to irreversible inhibition of FMOs, rather than increased clearance of the oedema fluid by macrophages and type II pneumocytes, down-regulation of FMOs, evaluated by in situ hybridisation and qPCR, or decreased GSH levels. In addition, it was found that the presence of an active FMO2 isoform enhances pulmonary FMO catalytic activity and leads to increased susceptibility to the toxic effects of NR678. In conclusion, the work presented here contributes evidence that FMO2 polymorphism may be relevant to humans and provides an animal model which can be used to study its implications. NR678 represents an interesting and unique approach to investigate the pathogenesis of ALI and, at the same time, understanding the defence mechanisms involved in adaptation may bring new insight into potential therapeutic strategies of lung diseases

Mid-infrared n-Ge on Si Plasmonic Based Microbolometer Sensors

The detection and amplification of molecular absorption lines from a chemical weapons simulant is demonstrated using plasmonic antennas fabricated from n-Ge epitaxially grown on Si. A free-standing Si0.25Ge0.75 microbolometer detector with n-Ge plasmonic antenna is demonstrated as an integrated mid-infrared plasmonic sensor