Focus groups of value concepts of producers: National Report Italy

The Organic Revision project was funded by the EU with the aim of supporting the further development of the EU Regulation 2092/91 on organic production. As part of the project focus groups were run in five European countries on value concepts of organic producers and other stakeholders, during 2004-2005. The project aims to provide an overview of values held among organic stakeholders, and of similarities and differences among the various national and private organic standards. In Italy four focus groups were held, a pre-test with AIAB staff, a group of policy makers, a group of established organic producers and a group of newly converted producers. The following conclusions were reached: The general impression is that there are three main values or areas which were considered important by all participants: • food quality and health (safety) • environment health and care • livelihood. Within the first issue, many detailed implications are included, starting from own health, consumers’ health, and so on, arriving to food safety, avoiding residues and link to regional or local territory. In this area, there were no significant differences between groups, perhaps only some personal point of view which could differ from one person to another; but generally speaking, this point was considered fundamental by all participants. It is important to mention that many discussions and ideas were raised by the term “quality” which seems very meaningful depending also on who is related to. Interesting was the idea about the possibility of finding measurable parameters of food quality in order to make it more comprehensible for consumers. More or less the same kind of considerations could be attributed to the value of environment health/care (which sometimes overlaps). In this case, we could say that virtually there was no real difference amongst participants, also in terms of personal values or points of view. The concept that organic farming is fundamental for preserving the environment and land it’s clear for all, and all of them agreed that this value should be strongly communicated to consumers. Regarding the third value, ‘livelihood’, it is possible to affirm that it is a fundamental aspect either in farmers and policy makers. But to say if this has to be considered as a value, rather than a mere practical problem, it is difficult to assess. In our opinion, farmers did not expressed their financial concern as directly linked to organic farming; they were more likely complaining about an actual situation, that could also change in the future. They were not expecting livelihood to be included in the organic farming values. Additional thinking over could be done on other minor areas, for their differences and peculiarities amongst participants. The issues of soil and animal welfare were discussed only by very few participants. The first one, was mentioned only by two cattle farmers in the experienced farmers group, having opposite ideas. The second one was cited only by two persons in two different groups. It seems that these matters are of secondary importance for Italian farmers and stakeholders. Or maybe, they are somehow included in other bigger areas. Also, the area of professional pride was considered quite important by many participants, especially by the experienced group, which mentioned it from the beginning, including it in the associations and in the motives for their conversion to the organic sector. Another aspect that was shared by all of them was the disappointment in finding out that consumers do not recognize their role and their value, so their efforts for doing “the right thing” seem worthless sometimes. Values under the ecological integrity area were yet discussed, but for sure were not considered relevant as others. Somebody focused on biodiversity, someone on energy consumption, but it was more a personal conviction moving these ideas than a typical characteristic. This is also demonstrated by the fact that there was not a clear connection between value importance and group category. Last, but not least, the moral implications in organic farming were indicated by two women from two different producers groups, indicating perhaps that women could be more interested in ethical values also in their professional life

Exclamative clauses at the syntax-semantics interface

Exclamative clauses exhibit a structural diversity which raises the question of whether they form a clause type in the sense of Sadock & Zwicky (1985). Based on data from English, Italian, and Paduan, we argue that the class of exclamatives is syntactically characterizable in terms of a pair of abstract syntactic properties. Moreover, we propose that these properties encode two components of meaning which uniquely define the semantics and pragmatics of exclarnatives. Overall, our paper is a contribution to the study of the syntaxlsemantics interface and offers a new perspective on the notion of clause type

The interplay between radio-activity and the ISM in radio galaxies

Radio-loud AGNs can inhabit regions with a very rich ISM. The presence of this rich medium is likely related to the origin and evolution of the host galaxy and of the active nucleus. Recent observations show that a large fraction of radio galaxies contains a significant young stellar population. This supports the idea that mergers are responsible for both the starburst phase and the triggering of the nuclear activity. The gas that reaches the central regions can have quite disturbed kinematics, likely due to the effects of the AGN activity and in particular of the powerful radio jets. The recent detection of fast nuclear gas outflows, observed both in ionised and neutral gas, is giving new and important insights into the physical conditions of the gaseous medium around the nucleus and the interaction between the AGN and this medium. Finally, as another example of the interplay between the radio activity and the ISM, the possibility of star formation induced by the passage of the radio jet will be discussed.Comment: Invited paper to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 222, The Interplay among Black Holes, Stars and ISM in Galactic Nuclei; Storchi Bergmann et al. eds. 6 pages, 3 figure

The Many Routes to AGN Feedback

The energy released by Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the form of radiation, winds, or radio plasma jets, is known to impact on the surrounding interstellar medium. The result of these processes, known as AGN (negative) feedback, is suggested to prevent gas, in and around galaxies, from cooling, and to remove, or at least redistribute, gas by driving massive and fast outflows, hence playing a key role in galaxy evolution. Given its importance, a large effort is devoted by the astronomical community to trace the effects of AGN on the surrounding gaseous medium and to quantify their impact for different types of AGN. This review briefly summarizes some of the recent observational results obtained in different wavebands, tracing different phases of the gas. I also summarize the new insights they have brought, and the constraints they provide to numerical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. The recent addition of deep observations of cold gas and, in particular, of cold molecular gas, has brought some interesting surprises and has expanded our understanding of AGN and AGN feedback.Comment: Invited review at the conference "Quasars at all cosmic epochs", published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, open access (https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2017.00042), 17 pages, 4 figure

Core-Shell Columns in High-Performance Liquid Chromatography: Food Analysis Applications

Theincreased separation efficiency provided by the newtechnology of column packed with core-shell particles in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has resulted in their widespread diffusion in several analytical fields: from pharmaceutical, biological, environmental, and toxicological.The present paper presents their most recent applications in food analysis.Their use has proved to be particularly advantageous for the determination of compounds at trace levels or when a large amount of samples must be analyzed fast using reliable and solvent-saving apparatus. The literature hereby described shows how the outstanding performances provided by core-shell particles column on a traditional HPLC instruments are comparable to those obtained with a costly UHPLC instrumentation, making this novel column a promising key tool in food analysis

Archaeology of active galaxies across the electromagnetic spectrum

Analytical and numerical galaxy-formation models indicate that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) likely play a prominent role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. However, quantifying this effect requires knowledge of how the nuclear activity proceeds throughout the life of a galaxy, whether it alternates with periods of quiescence and, if so, on what timescales these cycles occur. This topic has attracted growing interest, but making progress remains a challenging task. For optical and radio AGNs, a variety of techniques are used to perform a kind of "archaeology" that traces the signatures of past nuclear activity. Here we summarize recent findings regarding the lifecycle of an AGN from optical and radio observations. The limited picture we have so far suggests that these cycles can range from long periods of 10^7-10^8 yr to shorter periods of 10^4-10^5 yr, even reaching extreme events on timescales of just a few years. Together with simulations, observational results regarding the multiple cycles of AGN activity help to create a complete picture of the AGN lifecycle.Comment: Invited Review for Nature Astronomy, Aug 28 issue. 10 pages, 8 figure

Improving Classifier Performance Assessment of Credit Scoring Models

In evaluating credit scoring predictive power it is common to use the Re-ceiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve, the Area Under the Curve(AUC) and the minimum probability-weighted loss. The main weakness of the rst two assessments is not to take the costs of misclassication errors into account and the last one depends on the number of defaults in the credit portfolio. The main purposes of this paper are to provide a curve, called curve of Misclassication Error Loss (MEL), and a classier performance measure that overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks. We prove that the ROC dominance is equivalent to the MEL dominance. Furthermore, we derive the probability distribution of the proposed predictive power measure and we analyse its performance by Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we apply the suggested methodologies to empirical data on Italian Small and Medium Enterprisers.Performance Assessment, Credit Scoring Modules, Monte Carlo simulations, Italian Enterprisers