Claudio Magris, Tempo curvo a Krems

Claudio Magris, Tempo curvo a Krems(Milano, Garzanti, 2019, 88 pp. ISBN 978-88-1160-825-7) di Federico Prin

«Amnesia in Fancy Dress»: il pageant in Between The Acts di Virginia Woolf e in Wigs on the Green di Nancy Mitford

Il saggio si pone come obiettivo l’analisi della rievocazione storica, il pageant, e del suo significato all’interno di due romanzi inglesi dell’interwar period: Between the Acts (1941) di Virginia Woolf e Wigs on the Green (1935) di Nancy Mitford. Il pageant ha rivestito un ruolo di primo piano nell’Inghilterra degli anni compresi fra le due guerre, assurgendo a simbolo della tradizione inglese e della Englishness,e trovando, inoltre, un forte riscontro nella letteratura di quel periodo. In Between the Acts, la rievocazione storica messa in scena da Miss La Trobe nel cuore della campagna inglese, sul prato di Pointz Hall, è il riflesso del caos ineluttabile che contraddistingue la condizione umana nel mondo moderno e del profondo senso di solitudine e di isolamento della società inglese sull’orlo della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Mitford utilizza invece il pageant come strumento per smascherare l’inconsistente ideologia nazionalista del fascismo inglese di quegli anni, considerata dalla scrittrice solo vuota retorica priva di uno scopo concreto, e rappresentata, in Wigs on the Green, dal personaggio di Eugenia Malmains, la più ricca ereditiera inglese – versione romanzesca della sorella della scrittrice, la fascista Unity Valkyrie – fervente sostenitrice di Captain Jack e delle Union Jackshirts, partito fascista immaginario basato sulla British Union of Fascists di Sir Oswald Mosley. Partendo da una breve introduzione del pageant e del ruolo che riveste nella letteratura inglese degli anni ’30, si passa poi alla sua contestualizzazione all’interno delle opere di queste due scrittrici, focalizzandosi, in particolare, sul significato che assume in relazione al quadro storico-politico, culturale e sociale.This essay aims at analysing the role of the pageant within two novels of the interwar period: Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (1941) and Nancy Mitford’s Wigs on the Green (1935). Pageants have played a fundamental role in interwar England as symbols of both the English tradition and Englishness, also becoming the focus of 1930s English literature. In Between the Acts, Miss La Trobe’s historical pageant performed «in the heart of the [English] country», on the lawn of Pointz Hall, shows the inescapable chaos of the modern human condition and the sense of loneliness and isolation of English society on the brink of WWII. Mitford, instead, uses the pageant to unmask the insubstantial ideology of interwar English fascism, dismissed by her as «empty rhetoric», and represented, in Wigs on the Green, by the figure of Eugenia Malmains, «England’s largest heiress» – the fictional version of Nancy’s fascist sister, Unity Valkyrie – and an ardent supporter of Captain Jack and the Union Jackshirts movement, the fictitious equivalent of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. After a brief introduction on the function of the pageant in 1930s English literature, I move to its contextualisation in the aforementioned novels, focusing in particular on its meaning within the historical, cultural and social milieu

Storia, memoria e la Big House in The Last September di Elizabeth Bowen

La decadenza dell’Ascendancy anglo-irlandese e il tramonto della Big House, la grande casa di campagna dell’aristocrazia fondiaria protestante, costituiscono il fil rouge che attraversa diversi romanzi di Elizabeth Bowen tra cui The Last September (1929), The Heat of the Day (1949) e A World of Love (1955). In essi la Big House non solo riveste un ruolo centrale all’interno della narrazione come luogo cardine intorno a cui ruotano le vicende dei personaggi, ma assurge anche a emblema della crisi della tradizione e della cultura anglo-irlandesi, a simbolo di un passato fulgore dell’Ascendancy protestante, la landed class ormai in piena decadenza in un’Irlanda che ha subito molteplici mutamenti storici, politici, culturali e sociali. In The Last September Bowen associa Danielstown, la Big House del romanzo, alla “anthropological snobbery” (Glendinning 1988, p. 5) – tratto distintivo dell’aristocrazia anglo-irlandese – di Sir Richard e Lady Naylor, i suoi proprietari, i quali sono ancora saldamente legati alla staticità e alla continuità tipiche dell’Ascendancy della vecchia generazione: la loro grande dimora rurale simboleggia il passato, la memoria di una nazione che non c’è più e di un assetto sociale e di una tradizione che, sebbene esercitino ancora una forte presa sui suoi abitanti, sono gravemente minacciati dai profondi cambiamenti storico-politici che interessano la ‘nuova’ Irlanda post Prima guerra mondiale. L’incendio finale che divora Danielstown, e con essa la storia e i ricordi che la grande dimora rurale porta con sé, coincide con la dissoluzione dell’ordine e della gerarchia rappresentati dalla Big House e dai suoi proprietari

Sally Rooney, Normal People (Londra, Faber & Faber, 2018, 266 pp. ISBN 978-0-571-33465-0)

Sally Rooney, Normal People (Londra, Faber & Faber, 2018, 266 pp. ISBN 978-0-571-33465-0) di Federico Prin

Power system investment optimization to identify carbon neutrality scenarios for Italy

In 2021, the European Commission has adopted the Fit-for-55 policy package, legally binding European countries to reduce their CO2 emissions by 55% with respect to 1990, a first step to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. In this context, it is crucial to help national policymakers to choose the most appropriate technologies to achieve these goals and energy system modelling can be a valuable tool. This article presents a model of the Italian power system realized employing the open energy modelling framework Oemof. A Linear Programming Optimization is implemented to evaluate how to minimise system costs at decreasing CO2 emissions in 2030. The developed tool is applied to evaluate different research questions: i) pathway towards full decarbonization and power self-sufficiency of the electricity sector in Italy, ii) relevance of flexibility assets in power grids: li-ion batteries, hydrogen storage and transmission lines reinforcement. A 55% CO2 emissions reduction for the actual Italian power sector can be achieved through an increase of 30% of the total annual system cost. Full decarbonization can be reached with four times today's annual costs, which could be lowered with sector coupling and considering more technologies.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figure

Improving the monitoring of chronic heart failure in Argentina: is the implantable pulmonary artery pressure with CardioMEMS Heart Failure System cost-effective?

Background: The CardioMEMS® sensor is a wireless pulmonary artery pressure device used for monitoring symptomatic heart failure (HF). The use of CardioMEMS was associated with a reduction of hospitalizations of HF patients, but the acquisition cost could be high in low-and-middle income countries. Evidence of cost-effectiveness is needed to help decision-makers to allocate resources according to “value for money”. This study is aimed at estimating the cost-effectiveness of CardioMEMS used in HF patients from the third-party payer perspective -Social Security (SS) and Private Sector (PS)- in Argentina. Methods: A Markov model was developed to estimate the cost-effectiveness of CardioMEMS versus usual medical care over a lifetime horizon. The model was applied to a hypothetical population of patients with HF functional class III with at least one hospitalization in the previous 12 months. The main outcome was the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). To populate the model we retrieved clinical, epidemiological and utility parameters from the literature, whilst direct medical costs were estimated through a micro-costing approach (exchange rate USD 1 = ARS 76.95). Uncertainties in all parameters were assessed by deterministic, probabilistic and scenario sensitivity analysis. Results: Compared with the usual medical care, CardioMEMS increased quality-adjusted life years (QALY) by 0.37 and increased costs per patient by ARS 1,081,703 for SS and ARS 919,051 for PS. The resultant ICER was ARS 2,937,756 per QALY and ARS 2,496,015 per QALY for SS and PS, respectively. ICER was most sensitive to the hazard ratio of HF hospital admission and the acquisition price of CardioMEMS. The probability that CardioMEMS is cost-effective at one (ARS 700,473), three (ARS 2,101,419,) and five (ARS 3,502,363) Gross Domestic Product per capita is 0.6, 17.9 and 64.1% for SS and 5.4, 33.3 and 73.2% for PS. Conclusions: CardioMEMS was more effective and more costly than usual care in class III HF patients. Since in Argentina there is no current explicit threshold, the final decision to determine its cost-effectiveness will depend on the willingness-to-pay for QALYs in each health subsector.Fil: Alcaraz, Andrea. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Rojas Roque, Carlos. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Prina, Daniela Luciana. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: González, Juan Martín. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; ArgentinaFil: Pichón-riviere, Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; ArgentinaFil: Augustovski, Federico Ariel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. Centro de Investigaciones en Epidemiología y Salud Pública; ArgentinaFil: Palacios, Alfredo. Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria; Argentin

Risk factors for mental disorder development in asylum seekers and refugees resettled in Western Europe and Turkey: Participant-level analysis of two large prevention studies

BackgroundIn asylum seekers and refugees, the frequency of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, is higher than the general population, but there is a lack of data on risk factors for the development of mental disorders in this population.AimThis study investigated the risk factors for mental disorder development in a large group of asylum seekers and refugees resettled in high- and middle-income settings.MethodsParticipant-level data from two randomized prevention studies involving asylum seekers and refugees resettled in Western European countries and in Turkey were pooled. The two studies randomized participants with psychological distress, but without a diagnosis of mental disorder, to the Self-Help Plus psychological intervention or enhanced care as usual. At baseline, exposure to potentially traumatic events was measured using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire-part I, while psychological distress and depressive symptoms were assessed with the General Health Questionnaire and the Patient Health Questionnaire. After 3 and 6 months of follow-up, the proportion of participants who developed a mental disorder was calculated using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview.ResultsA total of 1,101 participants were included in the analysis. At 3- and 6-month follow-up the observed frequency of mental disorders was 13.51% (115/851) and 24.30% (207/852), respectively, while the frequency estimates after missing data imputation were 13.95% and 23.78%, respectively. After controlling for confounders, logistic regression analysis showed that participants with a lower education level (p = .034), a shorter duration of journey (p = .057) and arriving from countries with war-related contexts (p = .017), were more at risk of developing mental disorders. Psychological distress (p = .004), depression (p = .001) and exposure to potentially traumatic events (p = .020) were predictors of mental disorder development.ConclusionsThis study identified several risk factors for the development of mental disorders in asylum seekers and refugees, some of which may be the target of risk reduction policies. The identification of asylum seekers and refugees at increased risk of mental disorders should guide the implementation of focused preventative psychological interventions

The rise of noncommunicable diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean: challenges for public health policies

The health landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean is changing quickly. The region is undergoing a demographic and epidemiological transition in which health problems are highly concentrated on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In light of this, the region faces two main challenges: (1) develop cost-effective policies to prevent NCD risk factors, and (2) increase access to quality healthcare in a scenario in which a large share of the labor force is employed in the informal sector. This paper describes both alternative interventions to expand health insurance coverage and their trade-off with labor informality and moral hazard problems. The paper also focuses on obesity as a case example of an NCD, and emphasizes how lack of knowledge along with self-control problems would lead people to make suboptimal decisions related to food consumption, which may later manifest in obesity problems.Fil: Anauati, Maria Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de San Andrés; ArgentinaFil: Galiani, Sebastian. University of Maryland; Estados UnidosFil: Weinschelbaum, Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de San Andrés; Argentin