LOCAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT, INSTITUTIONAL INACTION AND THE TRAGEDY OF LOCAL PUBLIC GOODS

Empirical observation can confirm that not all rural communities enjoy an optimal level of local public goods: some public goods are provided more often and in a better quality than others. Given the vital importance of public goods for the welfare of local communities (among which the management of the local natural resource base for sustainable development plays a relevant role), the relation between existing local political institutions and their competences represents a critical issue for the concrete possibilities to properly produce, manage and provide local public goods. A better understanding of the nature of local public goods may increase the awareness of interdependence between local economic, environmental and social development not only in order to stop their continuing eroding but also to increase the possibility to produce local public goods and to design the institutional setting to overcome generic problems of public goods provision

LOCAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT, INSTITUTIONAL INACTION AND THE TRAGEDY OF LOCAL PUBLIC GOODS

Empirical observation can confirm that not all rural communities enjoy an optimal level of local public goods: some public goods are provided more often and in a better quality than others. Given the vital importance of public goods for the welfare of local communities (among which the management of the local natural resource base for sustainable development plays a relevant role), the relation between existing local political institutions and their competences represents a critical issue for the concrete possibilities to properly produce, manage and provide local public goods. A better understanding of the nature of local public goods may increase the awareness of interdependence between local economic, environmental and social development not only in order to stop their continuing eroding but also to increase the possibility to produce local public goods and to design the institutional setting to overcome generic problems of public goods provision

LOCAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT, INSTITUTIONAL INACTION AND THE TRAGEDY OF LOCAL PUBLIC GOODS

Empirical observation can confirm that not all rural communities enjoy an optimal level of local public goods: some public goods are provided more often and in a better quality than others. Given the vital importance of public goods for the welfare of local communities (among which the management of the local natural resource base for sustainable development plays a relevant role), the relation between existing local political institutions and their competences represents a critical issue for the concrete possibilities to properly produce, manage and provide local public goods. A better understanding of the nature of local public goods may increase the awareness of interdependence between local economic, environmental and social development not only in order to stop their continuing eroding but also to increase the possibility to produce local public goods and to design the institutional setting to overcome generic problems of public goods provision

DO THE RIGHT THING”: INNOVATION DIFFUSION AND RISK DIMENSIONS IN THE PASSAGE FROM CONVENTIONAL TO ORGANIC AGRICULTURE

Risk is quintessential in agricultural activities and the introduction of innovation in a farm always implies additional risks difficult to quantify and identify in advance. Surely farm’s internal and external sources of risk or kind of activities determine a complex entrepreneurial scenario but also psychological attitudes, feelings and behaviours of the individuals involved, a co-shared mentality and contextual culture may play a critical role as well. The case of the passage from conventional to organic agriculture exemplifies how a better understanding of “risk” and the related facets, perspectives and questions may provide relevant contributions to overcome the commonly shared idea of innate conservatism/impulsiveness in certain firms, economic sectors or class of entrepreneurs, to explain many cases of irrational resistance to innovation and to fill that frequent gap between technologists and farmers in the evaluation of the possibilities to adopt and implement also those innovations and new technologies necessary to achieve a more sustainable agriculture

Formaldehyde, Oxidative Stress, and FeNO in Traffic Police Officers Working in Two Cities of Northern Italy

Personal air formaldehyde (air-FA) was measured as risk factor of airways inflammation and oxidative stress (SO) induction. Overall, 154 police officers were enrolled from two differently urbanised Italian cities, Turin and Pavia. Urinary F2t-isoprostane (15-F2t-IsoP), a prostaglandin-like compound, was quantified as a biomarker of general OS in vivo and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) was measured for monitoring local inflammatory processes. Urinary cotinine was quantified as a biomarker of tobacco smoking exposure. Traffic police officers living in Turin showed an increased level of log air-FA (p < 0.001), equal to +53.6% (p < 0.001). Log air-(FA) mean values were 3.38 (C.I. 95% 3.33–3.43) and 2.84 (C.I. 95% 2.77–2.92) in Turin and Pavia, respectively. Log (air-FA) was higher in “outdoor workers” (3.18, C.I. 95% 3.13–3.24, p = 0.035) compared to “indoor workers”, showing an increase of +9.3%, even controlling for sex and city. The analyses on 15-F2t-IsoP and FeNO, both adjusted for log air-FA, highlighted that OS and inflammation were higher (+66.8%, p < 0.001 and +75%, p < 0.001, respectively) in Turin traffic police officers compared to those from Pavia. Our findings suggest that even low exposures to traffic-related emissions and urbanisation may influence both general oxidative stress levels and local inflammation

Single low-dose cyclophosphamide combined with interleukin-12 gene therapy is superior to a metronomic schedule in inducing immunity against colorectal carcinoma in mice

The use of conventional cytotoxic agents at metronomic schedules, alone or in combination with targeted agents or immunotherapy, is being explored as a promising anticancer strategy. We previously reported a potent antitumor effect of a single low-dose cyclophosphamide and interleukin-12 (IL-12) gene therapy against advanced gastrointestinal carcinoma, in mice. Here, we assessed whether the delivery of IL-12 by gene therapy together with metronomic cyclophosphamide exerts antitumor effects in a murine model of colorectal carcinoma. This combination therapy was able, at least in part, to reverse immunosuppression, by decreasing the number of regulatory T cells (Tregs) as well as of splenic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC s). However, metronomic cyclophosphamide plus IL-12 gene therapy failed to increase the number of tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes and, more importantly, to induce a specific antitumor immune response. With respect to this, cyclophosphamide at a single low dose displayed a superior anticancer profile than the same drug given at a metronomic schedule. Our results may have important implications in the design of new therapeutic strategies against colorectal carcinoma using cyclophosphamide in combination with immunotherapy.Fil: Malvicini, Mariana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Alaniz, Laura Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Bayo Fina, Juan Miguel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: García, Mariana Gabriela. Universidad Austral; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Piccioni, Flavia Valeria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Fiore, Esteban Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Atorrasagasti, María Catalina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Aquino, Jorge Benjamin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; ArgentinaFil: Matar, Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Ciencias Medicas. Instituto de Genetica Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Mazzolini Rizzo, Guillermo Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Austral; Argentin

The Comparative Exploration of the Ice Giant Planets with Twin Spacecraft: Unveiling the History of our Solar System

In the course of the selection of the scientific themes for the second and third L-class missions of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program of the European Space Agency, the exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune was defined "a timely milestone, fully appropriate for an L class mission". Among the proposed scientific themes, we presented the scientific case of exploring both planets and their satellites in the framework of a single L-class mission and proposed a mission scenario that could allow to achieve this result. In this work we present an updated and more complete discussion of the scientific rationale and of the mission concept for a comparative exploration of the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune and of their satellite systems with twin spacecraft. The first goal of comparatively studying these two similar yet extremely different systems is to shed new light on the ancient past of the Solar System and on the processes that shaped its formation and evolution. This, in turn, would reveal whether the Solar System and the very diverse extrasolar systems discovered so far all share a common origin or if different environments and mechanisms were responsible for their formation. A space mission to the ice giants would also open up the possibility to use Uranus and Neptune as templates in the study of one of the most abundant type of extrasolar planets in the galaxy. Finally, such a mission would allow a detailed study of the interplanetary and gravitational environments at a range of distances from the Sun poorly covered by direct exploration, improving the constraints on the fundamental theories of gravitation and on the behaviour of the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic field.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication on the special issue "The outer Solar System X" of the journal Planetary and Space Science. This article presents an updated and expanded discussion of the white paper "The ODINUS Mission Concept" (arXiv:1402.2472) submitted in response to the ESA call for ideas for the scientific themes of the future L2 and L3 space mission